Luxman Suckface, what was Luxman thinking?

Blue Shadow

Waiting for Vintage Gear from this century
I picked up a TOTL RX-103 Luxman Servo-Face receiver with remote today and started the usual dive into it to fix the suckface. I got the motor unit out and am putting the unit back together so I can set the adjustments while I wait for/find a belt.

Putting this chunk of plastic fantastic back together...it is not like nice vintage silver or champagne. Lots of little plastic buttons needing to find their way through the faceplate, lots of other buttons to pull to clean. Too many little circuit boards screwed down all over the place. This one is not completely full but there is not much room left.

I know the move to a flat faceplate without knobs was in the 83 time frame and I don't like the smooth look of push pads to make adjustments but this one has a few knobs and Luxman hid them with the suckface. Whatever, it is a Luxman designed just before Alpine took over and marketed under their reign so it should be a sweet unit.

Interesting that this top unit built at the end of the power wars was a 90 wpc unit and if one wanted more power they needed to step to the integrated amp.

It was nice reading over the spec sheet in anticipation of picking up the unit today. Just like the old days.
 

Attachments

  • RX-103.pdf
    848.6 KB · Views: 405
Last edited:
From all I've read/heard here, these things SOUND pretty decent, all the "Captain Video" nonsense notwithstanding...
 
Sold them at the hifi shop I worked when young. They sounded great! But everyone at the time was thinking the same thing........that's gonna break. Hope you get it back in good shape, you'll enjoy the sound. :music:
 
I have one and I dig it. The "suckface" seems a bit silly in hindsight, but no worse than putting a graphic eq on the face (Kenwood Model 11G) or hideous digital tuner display in large red or green numerals... And these Luxman's sound great and run cool.
 
I bought one new back in the day and it was a fine sounding unit connected to a couple of ADS L1090 speakers. Unfortunately a burglar decided he had to have it. I replaced the L1090s and still have them but the salesman talked me into a carver receiver. . I think the Luxman sounded better...
 
I had the LX104 integrated and the matching cassette deck. Having sold Luxman at the time, the thought was to differentiate their product from the rest of the market and offer integrated technology if you stayed in the family. For example, if you bought all servo face gear, you could control the stack by one remote. This was a first in the marketplace. They managed to build a product that looked like no other product on the market - and it was very functional.

All the glitz aside, the sound from these pieces was really special. The 104 had the warmth of the l480 it replaced but was much more open sounding with much more power. It made the L112's sound fantastic.
 
The (LX-)104 had the warmth of the l480 it replaced but was much more open sounding with much more power.

Interesting. I thought that since there was an LX-104 there would probably be the 101, 102 and 103 but no, just the 104 at 120 wpc which would have been the replacement for the L-580 at 100 wpc vs. the L-480 at about 70 wpc.
 
I bought a Luxman L-580 amp before the Suckface series came out. I was glad that I missed that particular trend. But like others said, they still sound pretty good. And if they can be disabled in the correct orientation, then they work great and you can pretend they were never suckface.
 
Just replaced the belt in a "suck face" not too long ago, used a belt from a Lite-On hard drive, supposedly the same as a Playstation. But now I have bigger fish to fry, tuner problems.

Craig
 
I think I have one or 2 of these laying around.

Here's a money shot of a LX-104 waiting to have a left channel issue looked at.



And to answer your question...I would assume marketing. 1983-1984, audio was changing...it was an attempt to stand out. In hindsight, probably not the best choice. But 30 years later, I still enjoy mine immensely.

And as Wigwam said, I have disabled the suck face in all of mine. As much as I am not fond of the suckface, I do love the look of all the back illuminated perspex controls. Especially late at night, with a good glass of Grappa....and stuff.:scratch2:
 
I rebuilt the suckface mechanism for a KX-101 deck recently... ended up with a bunch of spare parts (someone else sent me a complete mechanism that only needed the belt). The deck had other problems so I'm unloading it, but I did get the mechanism to run properly.

If you find anything is missing or have trouble getting that one working after you put a belt in it, give me a shout. It isn't all as obvious as it looks, and it's fairly common to find them already modified by someone else that didn't care if it worked as intended, as long as the knobs were accessible.

John
 
I've got the servo system out of the unit and it appears to want a brand new SCY 2.x belt to get it running again. The motor made noise so I expect it to work. I'll check the hardware store for something that will work.

My issues with this unit are all the damn plastic, not the knobs, those are the design feature of the unit, but the outer faceplate, some of the connections (of the knobs, I can't get the power or speaker selector switches off).

I mentioned the numerous circuit boards...this unit has 28 listed in the manual, one of which is the remote control. More than twice what it could have. I mean look at the unit pics and see that there is a cover that provides a bit more room on the bottom for the headphone circuit board. Luxman didn't think about putting the headphone output in the unit and had to tack it onto the bottom and then add a cover...what was Luxman thinking. All those circuit boards mean there are more sheet metal brackets holding them in place.

The amp board looks a lot like the one in the LX-104 picture with the big caps in the center of the unit.

Since it is going to sound good, I wish it was in a bit better condition but I'm ok with the unit as it is now...getting the servo-face fixed and such.
 
I have several problems with Luxmen of that era, being a former LX-104 owner. The quality of the faceplate and controls is pretty bad. The volume knob was wobbly with no way to correct it. The "silver" was silver paint over dark gray plastic. Scuff it and the base plastic would show through. And the suckface was an unnecesary complication.

But more seriously, I had to track down some problems in mine, and found that the audio signal chain was Rube Goldbergian. It was a far away from K.I.S.S as possible! Used as a standalone amp, it was great, but I was less than thrilled with the overall sound.

And wasn't Luxman under Alpine ownership at that time? That would explain a few things...
 
Hoping it'll just be the belt... my deck had a bad motor also, I put a new belt in and the motor spun but didn't have enough gumbo to drive the mechanism properly. And, a previous owner had taken parts out & rearranged things so the face would stay retracted. Had to deal with all of that before the new belt & good motor from the spare mechanism did what they were supposed to.

I agree with the other poster, the metal finish on these is not very robust though my knobs looked great... rest of the faceplate sure shows its age though. Cleaning it is delicate due to the thin coating of metal over plastic.

Didn't overly impress me for build quality, I can only assume some of the sexier earlier Luxman gear (preamps etc.) are cut from a different cloth.

John

I've got the servo system out of the unit and it appears to want a brand new SCY 2.x belt to get it running again. The motor made noise so I expect it to work. I'll check the hardware store for something that will work.

My issues with this unit are all the damn plastic, not the knobs, those are the design feature of the unit, but the outer faceplate, some of the connections (of the knobs, I can't get the power or speaker selector switches off).

I mentioned the numerous circuit boards...this unit has 28 listed in the manual, one of which is the remote control. More than twice what it could have. I mean look at the unit pics and see that there is a cover that provides a bit more room on the bottom for the headphone circuit board. Luxman didn't think about putting the headphone output in the unit and had to tack it onto the bottom and then add a cover...what was Luxman thinking. All those circuit boards mean there are more sheet metal brackets holding them in place.

The amp board looks a lot like the one in the LX-104 picture with the big caps in the center of the unit.

Since it is going to sound good, I wish it was in a bit better condition but I'm ok with the unit as it is now...getting the servo-face fixed and such.
 
The brochure I posted indicates Alpine but you have to figure the unit was on the design boards well before the takeover. Seems most of it will unplug and come out when needed. I think this was the Lux attempt to provide that horrible (ok some folks love it) push button flat front panel. Do not consider the company behind the products but the Revox, Yamaha, Kenwood and other manufacturers all had pushbutton front panels with very few knobs. And isn't the old saying "Knobs per Dollar?"
 
Suckfaces are kinda like 1960s Lincoln convertibles, I would think-Pretty decent in & of themselves, but to watch one "Doing its Thing" is truly a sight to behold..I got a Standing Ovation several times when I ran my top up & down in front of a crowd on my '67 Lincoln, back in the Eighties..
 
Ah come on guys. They were just having some fun with their gear. I had a number of them, and they were all good fun. The suckface stuff is about as useless from a functional perspective as VU meters, but no one complains about them.

These were basically just toys for big boys. Why not have ones that are cool to operate?
 
That was probably the precursor to the articulated LCD screen on vehicle head units today. Lux was just ahead of the curve.

I jumped in one of Southwest's A320s a while back and all the panels extended from the overhead consoles in unison. Just another gimmick, like the retractable face receiver control panel, I suppose. When you're third-best, you have to do something to grab attention.
 
Ah come on guys. They were just having some fun with their gear. I had a number of them, and they were all good fun. The suckface stuff is about as useless from a functional perspective as VU meters, but no one complains about them.

These were basically just toys for big boys. Why not have ones that are cool to operate?

THIS...(grin)
 
@ Blue Shadow - Yes, you are right, the equivalent piece would have been the 580 but I replaced an l480 so that was my comparison point. The 580 was an awesome piece.

@ All - If memory serves me, Alpine owned Luxman at the time of the servo face models. Oddly the servo face models looked like the Alpine car stereos of the era. PS, I still have the linear tracking turntable in the basement! Sonus super blue and all!
 
Back
Top Bottom