[jdandy]

Luxman may be importing quality audio components now, but their history doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me. The company was sold in 1985 to Alpine, famous for car audio, who promptly dragged the brand name, its products and reputation down to mid-fi level manufacturing cheap products to compete with the Big Box store offerings from Yamaha, Panasonic, Kenwood, and Sony. Luxman was one aisle over from the vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens. Then in 1995 Alpine sold the Luxman brand to Samsung who continued pumping out cheap mid-fi products with the Luxman logo. In 2000 the brand was sold back to Luxman Japan where it struggled for the next seven years to regain some form of notoriety in world distribution markets. In 2007 Philip O’Hanlan, with his On a Higher Note distributorship, resurrected the Luxman brand in the U.S. market. Luxman Japan had continued to sell Luxman in Japan during all of these years, but only in the past five years has Luxman been solid enough to gradually regain some semblance of its former self and high-end audio credentials in this market.

I will be the first to say Luxman has gained favor with many audiophiles in recent years and that's a good thing. I have read positive reviews from pundits and owners of their integrated amplifiers and other components, so they are recovering. Still, I remember the legacy of their past and can't help wonder if Luxman is really back, or just back while the going is good.