Luxman PD-310

Penultimate Luxman-by-Micro turntable, planned and produced before the Alpine sale.

Design-wise inherited from Micro is... everything but in a less "ultra" style than that of the ultimate PD-350.

The platter weighs 3,5kg and is made of aluminium ; inertia moment amounts to 500kg /cm2.

The motor is is a DC brush/slot-less FG Servo controlled ; I don't know if it was sourced from Pioneer like that of the PD-300 or from Matsushita like that of the PD555 or the SX-111FV or the PL-901...

The chassis is much simplified with only two 5mm steel plates making the top and bottom of the enclosure, the rest being a 3cm thick compressed particle board with added veneer.

Simple, flat, separate armbases were (optionally) offered in diecast aluminium only - no brass.

The VS-300 VDS pump clearly was an improvement over the self-pumping system of the PD-300 bestseller which had a tendency to gradually loose pressure after the beginning of a record's B side : a servo was here included to monitor and keep even the air in/out flows.

The VS-300 also feeds the PD-310 its running power. Or not : all japanese catalogs were factory penciled to hide everything related to the subject...
But close scrutiny proves a 5,000¥ external PS-300 was planned (PS for Power Supply) for those not in need of the VDS feature ; finally produced as AS-300.

Inherited from Luxman's MS-10 is the wire's material, aramid, developed by DuPont, here in "super-aramid" style : interwoven with nylon fibers and coated with very thin neoprene rubber for negligible loss of energy transfer and high friction coefficient.

Also inherited from Luxman was the magnificent design (by way of Diatone's earlier DP-91D), a design which, originally, had the top aluminium strip cover the front veneer section as well.

Gone however was the contemporary X-5P prototype... but the PD-310 sold well enough.


A real PD-310 here (with a non-standard wire instead of the aramid belt).