Philip O'Hanlon, formerly US marketing director for Halcro, has a new project. His distribution company, On a Higher Note, is bringing Japanese high-end company Luxman back to the United States.
Luxman was founded as Lux Corp. in 1925 by brothers T. Hayakawa and K. Yoshikawa, who manufactured radios for the just-established new broadcast medium. After several years of designing and assembling radios, the brothers decided to vertically integrate the company, manufacturing components in-house to cut costs and assure quality.
In 1931, Lux developed a magnetic pickup for its LUX 1730 electric phonograph. Over the years, it also produced classics such as 1958's MA-7A monoblock tube amplifier, which introduced negative feedback; the Tim de Paravicini-designed M-3000, M-4000, and M6000 power amplifiers; and the DA-07 Fluency DAC, whose highly regarded DSP, based on functional interpolation theory, "recreated high-frequency information not recorded on CD."
In 1984, Luxman became part of Alpine Electronics, which essentially whored out the name, tossing out the brand's legendary build quality and engineering to badge cheap Alpine components with the Luxman name and putting them into outlets like CostCo (US) and Richer Sounds (UK). High-end showrooms, such as Stereo Exchange, where I worked at the time, dropped the "real" Luxman line because the Alpine Luxmans confused our customers and made selling the expensive gear nearly impossible. The lack of a US market, among other factors, caused Alpine to sell Luxman back to a Japanese owner in the early 2000s.
Fortunately, as with Quad, some of the original engineering staff had hung on during Luxman's exile years, even continuing to design "real" Luxman products sub rosa, including the products later released as the flagship $30,000 C-1000 control amplifier and $48,000/each B-1000 monoblock power amplifier, released as 80th anniversary commemoratives.
"One of the remarkable things about Luxman," O'Hanlon said, "is that technology really does trickle down to more realistically priced models, such as the $8000 C-600 control amplifier and $8000 M-600 stereo power amplifier. Also impressive are the three universal (CD, DVD, SACD) disc players, which are superb two-channel music machines—although they do offer component video output, so you can watch video on them, too."
O'Hanlon will be presenting Luxman at the Rocky Mountain Audiofest and CES 2008, showing off the brand's tube and solid-state models in addition to the universal players. Look for the Luxman line to appear in "an exclusive network of specialty high-end audio retailers in all major metropolitan areas" in the near future. Interested dealers can contact O'Hanlon at Philip@onahighernote.com.
