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Vintage Luxman Tuner - which one?

Bynem said:
I don't have a dedicated tuner. My Luxman R-1050 tuner (just as it came out of the box, back when Jimmuh was president) does a decent job, even with just a thin gauge wire dipole. I need to get a better antenna.

If I were you, I wouldn't bother with the T-240. I tried one a while back. All of my receiver tuners (Luxman, Tandberg and Pioneer) work and sound better.
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I have a mint Luxman R-1070 which has had a
ALL of the capacitors upgraded along with new fast diodes and some transistor upgrades and an alignment. It sounded "fine" before the upgrades but sounded "STELLAR" after the work was completed. Huge difference....just sayin'.

Having played with every Luxman receiver up to the 1120a my very biased choice on performance is the r-1070. I verified its output at 110watts rms on test equipment even though its rating was 70wrms. Great tuner to boot!
 
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Solarwinds said:
I have a mint Luxman R-1070 which has had a
ALL of the capacitors upgraded along with new fast diodes and some transistor upgrades and an alignment. It sounded "fine" before the upgrades but sounded "STELLAR" after the work was completed. Huge difference....just sayin'.

Having played with every Luxman receiver up to the 1120a my very biased choice on performance is the r-1070. I verified its output at 110watts rms on test equipment even though its rating was 70wrms. Great tuner to boot!
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I have never heard an R-1070. I figure it's more than worth searching out.
There was one locally on craigslist a few weeks ago. I missed out on that.
 
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Bynem said:
I have never heard an R-1070. I figure it's more than worth worth searching out.
There was one locally on craigslist a few weeks ago. I missed out on that.
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Only buy one if you will rejuvinate it and get alignment. All old non rejuvinated audio is not up to its full potential.
 
Solarwinds said:
Only buy one if you will rejuvenate it and get an alignment. All old non rejuvenated audio is not up to its full potential.
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I am a bit biased here, but my R-1050 does okay (I have cleaned it and had a tech change the lamps and redo some bad soldering, nothing else). :music:

I'll have to see if Terry DeWick or somebody else in a reasonable distance has a less than three month turnaround for a restoration. Until that happens, I'll leave it as it is.
 
Bynem said:
I am a bit biased here, but my R-1050 does okay (I have cleaned it and had a tech change the lamps and redo some bad soldering, nothing else). :music:

I'll have to see if Terry DeWick or somebody else in a reasonable distance has a less than three month turnaround for a restoration. Until that happens, I'll leave it as it is.
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The power supply caps are easy. The FM board is just slightly a pain. The phono board just a little hard. Ths audio board is a real PITA and best left to a professional. The output transistors definately need the bias V tweaked. 60mV if I remember correctly....that is an easy adjustment. The variable tuning coil should be cleaned for dust. The tuner has sealed alignment coils and they don't need as much adjusting as most and are still probably pretty close. The coil cleaning with compressed air made a big difference to mine.
 
The R-1050 is a great receiver...sold a lot of them and can't ever remember one coming back for repair. I got a great deal on the R-1070 and I always wanted one otherwise I would own. 1050. Sold a fair amount of the R-1120 receivers and every one of them had problems. I think it was probably acid-rocker user abuse at that time in history. The 1070 had the same specs and sound quality as the 1120 with less power ( of which I didn't need) so the 1070 was my desire. Never sold the 1120a due to not stocking them because we had too many problems with the 1120. At that price point it was an easy upsell to separates and we didn't have as many problems.
The R-1030 was definately a basic starter receiver and showed its shortcomings when you tried to push it. Anemic!
 
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@Solarwinds I agree with your comment about the R-1120 coming back all the time. It was the guys with money, agricultural money from hidden plots in the hills and hollows of east TN and KY, in my case, they got that 1120 and some 901s and were ready to party. I doubt they even looked at the power LEDs while enjoying the tunes until the unit went silent.

We sold a lot of the LRS gear to those looking for separates.

I bought a cl stack that was listed in Tulsa, took three years to pony express to me. Had a 1050 and that is the part I wanted. Although I'm not a receiver guy, I'm glad to have this one sitting at my brother's while I hold on to his Audio Research preamp and McCormack power amp. I just haven't seen an R-1070 at what I think is buy it now, price but I have a lot of gear. Still on the radar, though.
 
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Solarwinds said:
The R-1050 is a great receiver...sold a lot of them and can't ever remember one coming back for repair. I got a great deal on the R-1070 and I always wanted one otherwise I would own. 1050. Sold a fair amount of the R-1120 receivers and every one of them had problems. I think it was probably acid-rocker user abuse at that time in history. The 1070 had the same specs and sound quality as the 1120 with less power ( of which I didn't need) so the 1070 was my desire. Never sold the 1120a due to not stocking them because we had too many problems with the 1120. At that price point it was an easy upsell to separates and we didn't have as many problems.
The R-1030 was definitely a basic starter receiver and showed its shortcomings when you tried to push it. Anemic!
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Haven't seen an R-1030 for sale around here, only on fleabay. I have seen few separates, almost no turntables. A lot of the Alpine era R-113 receivers in this neck of the woods, though.

Getting my R-1120 working right was more trouble than I expected. What the hell was I thinking buying anything electronic from a smoker.
Especially a guy who allows his long haired cat to sit on his equipment that has vents.
 
Piles of it, some needing work that I have to learn more to accomplish. Had to clean the table off for dinner guests tomorrow night, too. Fortunately, I have stands for the DQ-10s instead of using those four dining room chairs, so they'll have a place to sit.
 
Blue Shadow said:
Piles of it, some needing work that I have to learn more to accomplish. Had to clean the table off for dinner guests tomorrow night, too. Fortunately, I have stands for the DQ-10s instead of using those four dining room chairs, so they'll have a place to sit.
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Had John Dahlquist in my store for a day. I owned/own Quad esl57's and love the looks of these speakers. I preferred the sound of the Quads. We were a pro musician store with tons of music instruments to audition. I took different instuments and recorded them on an Otari 4 track deck. On playback the Dahlquists provided more accurate live reproduction but i still preferred the Quads. That day changed the way I viewed judging audio for me forever. What I like might not be the most realistic sounding. When i hear someone say " this is the best" i temper it with my personal experience and say to myself " it is the best for you but maybe not for someone else"
I was lucky enough to have Dr Bose, Saul Marantz, Gene Cerwinkski, Peter Walker, Henry Klauss all visit my store.
 
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Blue Shadow said:
@Solarwinds I agree with your comment about the R-1120 coming back all the time. It was the guys with money, agricultural money in my case, that got that 1120 and some 901s and were ready to party. I doubt they even looked at the power LEDs while enjoying the tunes until the unit went silent.

We sold a lot of the LRS gear to those looking for separates.

I bought a cl stack that was listed in Tulsa, took three years to pony express to me. Had a 1050 and that is the part I wanted. Although I'm not a receiver guy, I'm glad to have this one sitting at my brother's while I hold on to his Audio Research preamp and McCormack power amp. I just haven't seen an R-1070 at what I think is buy it now, price but I have a lot of gear. Still on the radar, though.
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Istore.
I bought the 1070 off ebay for $90. Seller said one channel had no output. I had a hunch it was user error and I was correct. The 1070 does not have a balance control and instead uses a split volume control. One side of the volume was turned all the way down. Nothing was wrong with it and mint condition to boot. Venus and Mars were alright on that night!
 
Blue Shadow said:
Piles of it, some needing work that I have to learn more to accomplish. Had to clean the table off for dinner guests tomorrow night, too. Fortunately, I have stands for the DQ-10s instead of using those four dining room chairs, so they'll have a place to sit.
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I know the "having too much audio gear" thing!!!! I cant pull into my 21/2 car garage because of the endless racks of audio gear. It is going to have to change though because we are moving 5 states away in the close future. It is all the equipment i wanted own at a younger age that i couldnt afford. Reliving my youth i guess.
 
Solarwinds said:
I cant pull into my 21/2 car garage because of the endless racks of audio gear. It is going to have to change though because we are moving 5 states away in the close future.
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I'd go to that yard sale.

My garage has cars in it. Odd.
 
Just a little update to this thread. Last fall I was looking thru Craigslist for Luxman. A t-110 tuner came up next town over. It was just 4 blocks from my favorite pizza place so I figured 'why not?' It was still in the box sealed!!!! It turns out the gentleman who owned it was an audio engineer for a radio station and had just passed. His son was a Dr. And was liquidating his posessions. I asked 'how much?' He said $70 and without a word I pulled out my wallet and handed over the cash. He called me an hour later and asked me if i would like a bunch of interconnects free but, i declined and thanked him for the thought. I have since changed out all capacitors and added hi speed risk diodes. I also added Burson discrete opamps. If you are into serious sounding FM you need to hear this setup. Much better then FMtunerinfo rates it! Just about as good as my fully modied Sansui tu-919 tuner. Which has every known mod done by Radio-X tuner with Burson Classic V6 discrete opamps.
FYI Adding Burson discrete opamps in many of my other components has ALWAYS made the most improvement of all after changing tired capacitors.
 
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