I just received my Luxman R-117 back from an authorized luxman repair shop in Connecticut. It needed a left channel and cost me $350 including shipping to repair it. I've been without it for almost two years as high-end shops in the area said it was unrepairable and parts unavailable. I am thrilled, to say the least. I have it paired with up with KEF 104's in my living room and just got KEF 900's for my family room. (I only run one set at a time and can hear crisp, clean, meticulate music house-wide). The Luxman drives these speakers so well that I only have to turn the volume up to less than 1/4. Needless to say the sound is phenomenal.
I purchased a used Luxman R-117 receiver after reading positive reviews posted on this site and Audiogon as a low cost addition to my budget high end system. One spray bottle of contact cleaner from radioshack took care of static from the volume pot and balance knob. I have not used the tuner section but use the unit to power magnepan 1.6 QRs speakers via nordost superflatline shotgun cables. I use an old sony 5 disc CDP 75es redbook player put through a McCormack DAC-1 Deluxe DAC via a sonicwave 280 glass fiber toslink. The receiver can power the magnepans to absurdly high levels of volume with clean power. My ears and neighbors give up before the amp section does! The sound is not harsh but neither is it tube like. Given the DAC and other components it is difficult to characterize except that it is very accurate when using the CD bypass which routes the CD signal past most of the pre-amp controls for a more direct connection. This is where the unit shines. It sounds as good as your source material and the McCormack deluxe DAC is very, very good. Without the CD bypass the sound is still excellent but slightly veiled and not quite as sweet as a nakamichi stasis SR-3 receiver. However the nakamichi runs out of gas on some full orchestral passages. The luxman also gives you the oportunity to bi-amp and has a remote for those that don't like to cross a room to adjust the volume etc. I've heard the Magnepan 1.6 speakers with classe electonics and a classe 1.5 CD player as well as with a Krell 300il and meridian 508 player and while different room acoustics obviously did vary the sound quality, non of those set ups came close to the sound I'm getting from the Luxman-R117 using the CD bypass and McCormack Deluxe DAC. I've owned high end audio systems for 25 years, some costing as much as a car and this is some of the best sound I have heard. Surely the Luxman R-117 is one of the best bang for the buck components to be found in the used market place.
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Luxman T-240 (1984, $200, photo) search eBay The T-240 is an extremely common bottom-of-the-line tuner that we don't recommend, since so many better Luxman tuners can be purchased inexpensively on eBay, but hold the phone! Our panelist Ray kinda likes his: "Inside the T-240 I found a small sealed RF box that I'll guess has 4 varactor FM gangs. That's followed by two nice blue 230 kHz GDT filters. The detector is an LA1235 quadrature type and the MPX IC is a HA12016 that has feedback de-emphasis which calculates to 70 µS. The board has a blank provision for a 50/75 µS switch but the power transformer is single 120v primary. Tuning is only done in .2 MHz leaps but the tuner is surprisingly sensitive off a 30' wire. It seems to pull as hard as some of my big boys when on the bench. Plugged into my workbench system, which recently inherited a subwoofer thingy, it sounds pretty darn good. All told, I would say the bottom of Luxman's barrel ain't all that bad." Ray added some technical comments: "Stock it has a time constant of 68.5 µS with the expected shelf above 2 kHz of +.55 dB. On the bottom it's -0.10 at 40 Hz, -0.60 at 20 Hz and -2.1 at 10 Hz... not bad. The feedback deemphasis caps were .0015 µF so I put 100 pFs across each one. This brought the T.C. to 73 µS and the response leveled to +0.10 dB. This tuner must have good pilot filters as I see no impingement at 15 kHz, but a 19 kHz signal goes waaay South. Through my workbench system it now sounds virtually the same as my workhorse modded Technics ST-S707, and that ain't bad at all." Luxman's marketing materials list the following features: "FM/AM Digital Synthesized Tuning; High Energy PLL Circuit; Spectrum Front End AGC Circuit; High selectivity IF Filter; 16 FM/8 AM Station Preset Memory; Memory Scan; Preset Channel Display; FL Frequency Display; Memory Back-up Battery System; Up/Down Switch; Memory Store Switch; Muting/Mono Switch; FM/AM Change switch; Memory A/B Change Switch; 8 Preset Switch. The T-240 Tuner features Luxman's exclusive High Energy PLL Circuit as well as newly designed spectrum front end circuitry, which provides superb, stable, accurate tuning, good receiving qualities and an excellent signal-to-noise ratio." The T-240's specs are actually pretty good for a cheapie tuner: Usable sensitivity 10.3 dBf; 50 dB quieting sensitivity, mono, 13.7 dBf; alternate channel selectivity 80 dB; S/N ratio, stereo, 74 dB; stereo separation, 1 kHz, 50 dB; capture ratio 1.5 dB; IF and spurious response ratios, both 100 dB; stereo distortion at 65 dBf, 0.1%; frequency response 30 to 15 kHz +/- 0.5 dB. The T-240 very rarely sells for more than $40 on eBay, and one even went for $2.25 in 1/09. A "new old stock" T-240 went for $76 in 7/08, and two lunatics bid up the price of a garden-variety one from $25 to $202 in 3/09. 2ff7e9595c
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