anyone heard of Luxman amp.pls help

Like mentioned above, Luxman never left. Even when they were selling less robust stuff here in the late 80s thru mid-90s (less robust than before, but still often better sounding than Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo, HK, NAD, etc), they were building very high-end pieces for the Japanese market...pieces that cost $2000-$10,000...pieces that didn't have the compromises of their lower end gear. They are still building and selling thoise pieces in Japan. As a matter of fact, I believe they have a universal player out right now that retails for more than $5k. You can check their website. It's Japanese, but you'll get the general idea.

I'd recommend trying the piece if it's possible. I have had 6 or more Luxman components over the last ten years (dating from the mid 70s to early 90s) and all were very good, very musical components.

Sean, I didn't know until this post you were from Chicagoland.

http://www.hilberink.nl/codehans/luxman.htm has many color brochures of Luxman equipment, though not all of them.

You'll also find other useful Luxman links there.
The company site in Japan has a history page that's a good read.

On the whole, it's fair to say that it's like the Japanese version of the old Marantz in the US. It wasn't marketed seriously in the US until the 70s. Their prices were comparable to McIntosh. However, it didn't have a loyal customer base like Mac, so the prices today are very cheap...because some younger folks have never heard of them.

Luxman did make some of the top tuners in addition to amps. After Alpine took over, they made a lot of lower quality products, but they did maintain a small effort at the no-compromise exotic high end. The LV-105 hybrid amp with tubes and MOSFETs was the first of its kind. The T-03/C-03/M-03 tuner/pre/amp series in the late 80s was probably the last set of great products. if you look at the power supplies in these amps you wouldn't say that they're light weight. The M-03 was marketed in the US as the M-117 without the digital meters. The T-03 became known as the T-117. The C-03 was never not sold in the US, probably because of the chaos in the company's marketing strategy.

hoho

http://luxman.fotopic.net/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/luxman/