Luxman C-300

The C-300 is one half of the last classic Luxman combo to not see part of its production run go through the Alpine takeover.

Price-wise a step below the C-5000A (almost half, exactly), but part of Stereo Sound's "Best Product" section in the winter of 1981 nevertheless.

The C-300 is a modern-looking Class A dual-mono preamplifier holding all the 1980 modern Luxman : Duo-Beta NFb scheme and Plus-X regulation.
Anybody reading TVK since 2005 knows what Duo-Beta and Plus-X are and how they work so I won't repeat the description here - see the TECH 1 section if you don't remember.

Added to those proven technologies was a Line Phase Sensor : a small back bit allowing to see if the AC cord is plugged the right way, in phase. At first implemented with a round button, the production C-300s saw the final, square, design - more in sync with the upcoming 1980s :)
Luxman still has that today and I really wonder why nobody else does.


Low-noise dual-FETs by cascode bootstrap with current mirror loads make the MM / eq stage's 1st stage ; the 2nd stage is again cascode constant current load amp using hifT PNP transistors together with an active resistor circuit ; the output stage is a large current Class A push-pull.

The MC stage has FET parallel input (1st stage) and Class A pure complementary push-pull with added constant voltage circuit for output.

Unlike the later L-430 or L-550, there is a flat amp but is is the same circuit as the eq section ; all circuits are DC Servo operated.
Except for the output, there were no relays yet but most switches were placed next to the back-plate such as monitor and dubbing or the direct MC input which bypasses the input selector.

The low-impedance power-supply is entirely dual-mono, rectifiers and constant voltage circuits included.

Also in : Luxman's traditional usable tone controls, a Twin-T subsonic filter inherited from the first Laboratory Standard Series (1976), film caps bypassed by styrol caps (power supply), non-magnetic chassis, OCF 500-core shield cable, gold-plated plugs etc


The C-300 however hides all this under luxuriously discrete looks, with or without wood enclosure - better with.


Depending on market and timeframe, the 300 combo was announced as the "New Laboratory Series" - the second of a long line of befuddling marketing tags with Reference, Laboratory and Standard always present. But not necessarily in that order, Luxman oblige !

Made to be mated with the equally luxurious and equally Class A M-300 amplifier, the C-300 sold fairly well during a rather short period of time : barely a year and a half on most markets.