Luxman MQ-3600 Stereo Tube Amplifier with Original Luxman Tubes

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The MQ-3600 is a 50W stereo tube amplifier made by the renowned Japanese audio company Luxman.

It was hand-made in Japan from the highest quality materials of the time and benefits greatly from the quality of the transformers in particular, which contribute to a lush warm dynamic sound quality.

Luxman tube amps from this era are a rare find in the US. Most were sold overseas and kept in the Asian market. You can buy them from Japanese websites, but it will cost you an arm and a leg including international shipping and may not be the correct voltage.

This is a 110V US version that was clearly well cared for and babied. It was part of a large collection that we just purchased from a local collector which included dozens of amplifiers. So you can imagine just how little use it received.

The MQ-3600 was designed to run on proprietary Luxman 8045G tubes that were specifically developed for Luxman in collaboration with NEC. This example is loaded with the original 8045G's, and the tubes are in great shape and test strong. I suspect there are many years left in them.

If you find another MQ-3600 out there it likely has been converted to work on much more common 6550 or KT88 tubes. There is a simple conversion available in case someday you don’t want to have to buy the much more expensive 8045G tubes. The originals are still out there however, so if your wallet allows you can keep this original over time which is our strong suggestion.

Overall physical condition is very good, there are a few scratches or scuffs throughout but nothing very noticeable. The grill cover / tube cage is in rare good shape as most are dented and have actually rusted over time while stored in a humid basement.

On the back you'll find gold plated binding posts plus gold plated RCA jacks, and variable input level adjustments for the incoming audio signal. There are also speaker taps for 4, 8, and 16 ohms.

The design of this amplifier flows from right to left as you've probably gathered from the photos. On the right you'll find the input transformer and choke coils, followed by the input tubes, output tubes, and output transformers feeding directly into speaker terminals.

The amplifier is in perfect working condition and all of the tubes test strong and clean. We ran the unit on our workbench to its full rated power and it measured clean.

It was also tested in our listening room for some time to ensure that the test equipment reports translated to good quality audio.

This is a rare and beautiful unit (especially with the original output tubes) and is priced accordingly. No lowball offers please.

From hifiengine.com: "The Luxman MQ3600 features an exclusive giant triode tube 8045G and new powerful output transformer, making it possible to obtain such high power output as 50W/ch into 4/8/16 ohms with no more than 0.5% total harmonic distortion."

Specifications:

Power output: 50 watts per channel into 8Ω (stereo)
Frequency response: 10Hz to 35kHz
Total harmonic distortion: 0.5%
Damping factor: 14
Input sensitivity: 0.85V
Speaker load impedance: 4Ω to 16Ω
Dimensions: 18.30" x 8.11" x 6.61" (465 x 206 x 168mm)
Weight: 37.5lbs / 17kg 

PDF copy of the original tech specs and schematic

Link to more historical info from The Vintage Knob website

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