This was a small safety & sanity restoration project.
When I bought the preamp it had one of the 4-cap bank replaced in the most unusual way. Probably using the first cap in the drawer matching the spec. Except for being axial, not radial, so implementation was... hmmm... potentially lethal.
I always open the vintage equipment before I power it up, just in case. In this case, it was a life saver. Since I didn't have a matching radial 33uf/350v handy, I inserted a piece of foam under the bent uninsulated leg hoovering over the 3 unrelated solder points on the PCB by a few microns.
I used it like this for quite a while and then used something else, and something else, until I found the time to replace all caps in that bank. Simple rule of thumb - if one in the bank was bad, the others must be marginal at best.
This is what I saw after I took them out. All 3 original radials leaked electrolyte.
So, 4 modern high temp low ESR EL caps and two best Wima MKP4 (why not...) later, safety and sanity were restored.
After:
At this point, I must mention Luxman's design ingenuity, being able to fit a 7 valve preamp with an amazing set of built in features into a box that is about 1/4 of the volume of equivalent ARC and half the volume of Conrad-Johnson preamps from the same era. Neither of which had half of the inputs, adjustments and switchgear functions that this little marvel has.
At the same time, working on it is as easy as top off, bottom off, everything accessible.
Quality of switchgear is beyond reproach. Rotary switches are open so they can be spray cleaned or the wafers taken out and serviced or replaced.
A few photos to demonstrate just how marvelous this little thing is.
Late great Tim de Paravicini told me that he can't remember being involved in the CL32 design; there was another engineer, Japanese, that was working on preamps during Tim's stint at Luxman when he designed the famous MQ3600 and a few other power amps based on the same valves and topology.
But the amount of pure genius that can be found in details of this preamo just screams Tim dP to me.
When I bought the preamp it had one of the 4-cap bank replaced in the most unusual way. Probably using the first cap in the drawer matching the spec. Except for being axial, not radial, so implementation was... hmmm... potentially lethal.
I always open the vintage equipment before I power it up, just in case. In this case, it was a life saver. Since I didn't have a matching radial 33uf/350v handy, I inserted a piece of foam under the bent uninsulated leg hoovering over the 3 unrelated solder points on the PCB by a few microns.
I used it like this for quite a while and then used something else, and something else, until I found the time to replace all caps in that bank. Simple rule of thumb - if one in the bank was bad, the others must be marginal at best.
This is what I saw after I took them out. All 3 original radials leaked electrolyte.
So, 4 modern high temp low ESR EL caps and two best Wima MKP4 (why not...) later, safety and sanity were restored.
After:
At this point, I must mention Luxman's design ingenuity, being able to fit a 7 valve preamp with an amazing set of built in features into a box that is about 1/4 of the volume of equivalent ARC and half the volume of Conrad-Johnson preamps from the same era. Neither of which had half of the inputs, adjustments and switchgear functions that this little marvel has.
At the same time, working on it is as easy as top off, bottom off, everything accessible.
Quality of switchgear is beyond reproach. Rotary switches are open so they can be spray cleaned or the wafers taken out and serviced or replaced.
A few photos to demonstrate just how marvelous this little thing is.
Late great Tim de Paravicini told me that he can't remember being involved in the CL32 design; there was another engineer, Japanese, that was working on preamps during Tim's stint at Luxman when he designed the famous MQ3600 and a few other power amps based on the same valves and topology.
But the amount of pure genius that can be found in details of this preamo just screams Tim dP to me.
