Tube Preamp Reviews

Speaking of the Luxman's tone controls: Activating the CL-38u's tone defeat—ie, switching the tone controls off—bypasses the tone controls' extra circuitry, under which condition the Luxman preamp sounded fine. But with tone defeat disabled and the tone controls enabled, the sound was cloudier, less open. The difference wasn't big, and with some recordings the ability to scrape the frost off the treble range far outweighed the diminution in transparency. Incidentally, neither the Luxman's rumble filter nor its balance control nor its mono switch—arguably the CL-38u's three most useful "extras"—imposed any such penalty.

A final installation note: The molded plug of the AC cord supplied with the Classic CL-38u has only two prongs; similarly, although the preamp is fitted with an IEC socket, said socket lacks a third contact—and the corresponding portion of the AC cord is as smooth and undisturbed as a Mexican tetra's eye socket. For those reasons if no others, it would seem that aftermarket AC cords need not apply.

Listening
Fully warmed up, the Classic CL-38u presented music with natural, realistic warmth and color, and fine bass-to-treble balance. Its perspective was neither recessed nor excessively forward, and its spatial presence tended toward the larger end of the scale.

Touch and impact were very good. In the recording of Strauss's Metamorphosen by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (LP, Argo ZRG 604), pizzicato notes in the double basses, while timbrally rich almost—but not quite—to the point of plumminess, were not at all lacking in tactile snap. A related characteristic was the CL-38u's sheer speed and clarity of musical timing. Up-tempo jazz and pop benefited from that quality, of course, but so did classical music, as with the well-known recording by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra of Franck's Symphony in d (LP, RCA Living Stereo LSC-2131). Munch's flexible, turn-on-a-dime tempos were explicitly put across by the Luxman, as were the momentum and sheer power of the orchestra in this performance's many accelerandi.

Equally impressive with large-scale music were the Luxman's dramatic expressiveness, and its ability to remain unfazed during the highest and densest peaks. The CL-38u's handling of the many unexpectedly powerful crescendi in Metamorphosen was especially notable: The sound remained free of audible strain, even as the music was, emotionally, nearly overwhelming. On the few occasions when I allowed playback levels to get out of hand, the Luxman responded not with harshness but with a bit too much texture. For example, with Georg Solti and the London Symphony Orchestra's recording of Mahler's Symphony 2 (2 LPs, Decca/Speakers Corner SET 325/6)—the rare Decca classical recording that sounds just a little too hi-fi to my ears—my recklessness with the volume control yielded a slight excess of grain in the sounds of loudly played brass instruments.

The line between getting the right amount of detail out of a recording and an excess of same is similar to the line between enjoying the outdoors during temperate weather and being eaten alive by mosquitos; the Classic CL-38u was, I'm happy to say, on the correct side of that border. While the Luxman was in my system, I spent more than one evening with the lovely Soria Series album The Golden Age of English Lute Music, by guitarist/lutenist Julian Bream (LP, RCA Living Stereo LDS-2560), and was impressed—not to mention entertained, even charmed—by how the Luxman provided just the right percussiveness to each note without sounding mechanical or hi-fi. In the Luxman's hands, those attacks were followed by the realistic blooming of individual notes, with very good color and physicality. Additionally, the CL-38u's facility with spatial detail made it easy to hear and appreciate the simple techniques used to record this music, and to hear differences between certain selections in miking technique and miking distances—as between the gorgeous Thomas Morley Pavan, and the notably more distantly recorded Batell Galliard of John Dowland.

My midlife King Crimson fascination endures, so much so that I sought out and found, for $20, a UK import LP of the band's fourth album, Islands (LP, Island ILPS-9175). Since its arrival, I haven't once filed it away—and it sounded fine through the CL-38u. In "The Letters," the textures of Mel Collins's saxophones and Ian Wallace's brushed drums, the latter heavily compressed in the manner of the day, were portrayed beautifully by the CL-38u. The Luxman was also good at separating from one another the sounds of superficially similar instruments—as in the title track's juxtaposition of the eerie, otherworldly Mellotron with the earthy, more richly textured sounds of Robert Fripp's harmonium.

Neil Young's Live at the Cellar Door (LP, Reprise 535854-1) is surely one of the biggest records in my collection: not only for the huge piano sound in some songs but for the similarly big sound of Young's acoustic guitar in the rest of this solo-performance album. Reproduced correctly, Young's old Martin dreadnought should have not only good scale but also a wide range of intensities, with peaks that border on the out-of-control—as in "Don't Let It Bring You Down," where the strings are tuned down a full step, and the bottom string is tuned down yet another full step, to C. The CL-38u stood alongside my own Shindo Masetto in allowing that simple acoustic guitar to sound almost dangerous—and while I hope and intend not to overuse this reference, I will add that my dog, who barks at the sounds of big trucks rolling through the village, flew into a rage when I played this song at only a moderate level.

Based on listening with CD and USB DAC sources, the CL-38u's line inputs offered the same sonic characteristics as its phono section: good balance, very good dynamic range, and a timbral presentation that left little doubt as to the Luxman's active components of choice. As with most other gear of my acquaintance, Loudon Wainwright III's The BBC Sessions (AIFF file ripped from CD, BBC SFRSCD073) sounded somewhat brittle, the Luxman refusing to round off its edges, but with a nice sense of immediacy and very good musical momentum and flow for digital playback. And after listening to a vinyl version of violinist David Oistrakh and Jascha Horenstein's recording of Bruch's Scottish Fantasia, with the London Symphony (LP, Decca/Speakers Corner SXL 6035), I played the same thing on CD (London/Classic Compact Discs CSCD 6337), and again luxuriated in the Luxman's realistically warm way with strings and excellent sense of scale.

Conclusions
Here's a pretty safe bet: To the most casual observer, the Luxman Classic CL-38u is either the preamp with the wooden cabinet or the preamp with the tone controls. Both reactions are understandable, but each does this product a disservice. First and foremost, the CL-38u is a distinctly musical product whose sonic strengths happened to nicely mesh with my own priorities. As for the rest . . . well, I could take or leave the tone controls, but I admit that I was delighted to have a mono switch and a balance control, neither of whose use smudged the sound.

And $4200 for a full-function (line plus phono), Japanese-made preamplifier of this caliber is not just a good value: It's an exceptional value.

Perhaps because the cosmetics of the Classic CL-38u and my Shindo Masetto preamp are poles apart—the only physical characteristic the two products have in common is the very welcome fact that neither is any bigger than it needs to be—I was a little surprised at how effectively the former stepped in for the latter. And after a couple of months with the Luxman in my system, I was still in no great rush to push it out the door. Throughout that time, I derived no less pleasure from my music collection than I'm used to with the Shindo. That may sound to some like faint praise, but any number of my reviewer colleagues will agree that the products that most deeply impress us are often the ones of which we find ourselves saying, "Yeah, I could live with that."

I could very easily live with the Luxman Classic CL-38u. Strongly recommended.