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Luxman LV-103 tube/SS hybrid amp

Nirky

Nirky

Active Member
Hi, just purchased a Luxman LV-103 tube/ss integrated amp. Late 80's or early 90's vintage. Love the sound, it uses two tubes in the preamp stage. Very detailed sound, more like tube amp than solid state. Anyone else have a Luxman hybrid? I'm real happy about it!
 
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I don't have any mainly because they bring sooo much money on ebay. I've seen the tube hybrid CD players going in the $400 range used, and that's insane money for something that may or may not have its laser die at any time, given its vintage.
 
After finding out about the Toshiba SD-3950 & 3960 DVD/CD players, I'm all set, CD-wise, don't need any tube CD players, those Toshibas are amazing stock, or they can be easily modded.

Know what you mean about Ebay pricing, I was hoping to get my amp for $150, but had to go $203. Oh well, now I can do a little tube rolling! :banana:
 
Nirky said:
Hi, just purchased a Luxman LV-103 tube/ss integrated amp. Late 80's or early 90's vintage. Love the sound, it uses two tubes in the preamp stage. Very detailed sound, more like tube amp than solid state. Anyone else have a Luxman hybrid? I'm real happy about it!
Click to expand...

I have an old LV103, that I purchased new in 1985. It was insanely expensive back then, around 2000.00! That is an insane amount of cash for an amplifier rated at 60 watts. The "sales reptile" assured me that I would not be disappointed as it was one of the best amps I could buy, and I would own it a lifetime. Well 27 years later, it is still my prime music amp in my studio sitting right next to me right now playing beautiful music. I also have a vintage McIntosh all tube amp, which is not connected at the moment. The luxman has more inputs, and it sounds so close to the Mac, and produces a heck of alot less heat! Something to be said for old Lux quality. They were built bullet proof, with great componets, and quality capacitors. The 2 tubes are in the 2nd differncial stage, that directly drives the MOSFET output. The tubes are dual triode, and provide all the gain needed to drive the MOSFET.
MOSFET transistors have the same charactoristics as a tube, and are far superrior to any bipolar transistor. For a breif period I put my expensive Sony surround amp in my studio as my luxman was in need of switch and control cleaning. It sounded terrible, and made my ears bleed! As soon as I had the luxman ready I couldn't wait to get it back in service. FYI I am running the original tubes, and they still sound great.
 
Nirky said:
Hi, just purchased a Luxman LV-103 tube/ss integrated amp. Late 80's or early 90's vintage. Love the sound, it uses two tubes in the preamp stage. Very detailed sound, more like tube amp than solid state. Anyone else have a Luxman hybrid? I'm real happy about it!
Click to expand...

I have an LV-103. Owned it since it was brand new. It was an incredibly expensive piece of equipment back in 1984. I paid over 2,000.00 for this amplifier, and I consider it the finest amplifier I have owned. 31 years later I am still using it, and it hasn't had any problems other than needing the input switches cleaned. Recently the phono preamp has stopped working, so I will have to open it up, and tend to that one of these days.
 
I picked up a luxman lv103 that seemed to be working fine. I noticed all the red leds were lite. Accidnetally had a short and the right side went out along with the d7310 led. Is there a fuse somewhere that i am missing or did this blow an ic or transistor. Can you guys help me get this going? It sounds really good. Nice warm sound.Thanks.
 
This thread was started 11 years ago, with the most recent reply being close to 3 years ago. The OP hasn't posted to AK or this thread in close to 5 years.

Luxman makes great gear so here's hoping you can sort out your the issue and get back in tip top shape.

A service manual can be found here* also this is a pretty long service video that might help

* https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/luxman/lv-103.shtml

 
Thank you. I noticed that higher wattage resistor is loose on the tube preheat board. Maybe one of the tubes (right channel failed). I am trying to figure out how to remove the front panel to fix the loose resistor and check the tubes. I also noticed that the schematic shows more fuses than I can find on my unit. I fonly have a .5 and 6 amp fuse on a board on the left side.
 
I tried replacing the tubes and the right channel is still out.I fixed the loose resistor too. I noticed that when the tubes warm up one of the red leds near the output transistors doesn't light up on the right channel. There is also no sound on the right channel from the headphone jack. Any suggestions? Can the ic blow on one channel. I only find two fuses in my model which I believe is the z model. Are there fusible links somewhere? Thank you.
 
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