Luxman PD-300

Luxman's original "affordable" VDS turntable, launched a few months after the big PD555 - both planned and produced almost three years before Alpine took over.
The PD-300 was Micro-engineered, of course, and followed the latter's evolution back to belt-drives.

Unlike the PD555, the PD-300 has a built-in manual VDS air pump but can receive the optional, external, electrical, VS-300 unit for the lazy souls as the built-in pump is to be air-filled with the front lever which one has to activate, activate, activate, activate and activate once more until the record at last makes one with the platter.

When the pump is filled, the bright orange indicator next to the lever lights up. If one is very stict regarding an even cm/kg pressure, the built-in system allows 35 minutes, tops ; after that the pressure starts to diminish.

If the optional VS-300 pump is used, the front lever becomes useless and is to be replaced by a shiny aluminium cap - a pretty yet extra-rare accessory apparently made available through the very first production batch only.

Suspension is done with two systems added : spring-like suspension of the enclosure, plus three-point suspension of the diecast sub-chassis with a system almost exactly equivalent to that of the PD555 or the Denon DP-100M : spring + feather + oil-bath + neoprene filler.

Said three-points are centered around the bearing / spindle, leaving the arm base part of the sub-chassis fairly distant.

Power-on and (narrow) pitch-controls are all located under the enclosure (front). The air intake and remote trigger for the VS-300 pump are at the back, alongwith the ground post and the Line Phase Sensor which the VS-300 also has... on its front.

Interestingly, while the PD555 's motor was source from Matsushita, the one for the PD-300 came from Pioneer but the PD-300, while still produced by LUX in Osaka, bears a MITO T-Tag - where MITO = Micro Tokyo.
The VS-300 optional air pump has a YAGI T-tag.

The rest of the PD-300 doesn't call for particular comments, except for exceptional build quality and lavish Luxman looks.
Only the later PD-310 and PD-350 would be even more beautiful.


The PD-300 was made to be mated with the C-300 and M-300 combo which were the last LUX solid-state high-end components to be produced only by LUX in Osaka and not partly by Alpine for the later runs like the C-05 and M-05.


See a real PD-300 here, with a Technics EPA-100.