"If you're looking for a versatile phono preamp in the under $10K price point, don't buy until you get a chance to hear the Luxman E-07. I'm glad I did."
That's Michael Fremer, writing in Tracking Angle. In a market crowded with high-end options, he cut through the noise with a direct challenge. He wasn't the first reviewer to fall for Luxman's flagship phono preamp, either.
The Audiophiliac: "the quietest phono preamp I have ever used"
Steve Guttenberg, The Audiophiliac, published his full-length video review, "LUXMAN's Ultimate Phono Preamp, the E-07," in December 2025. The first thing that jumped out at him was the silence: "It is, well, easily the quietest phono preamp I have ever used." Even on headphones, he said, "the E-07 is dead quiet." (He also reports that the knob feel is "borderline erotic.")
Against his long-time reference phono preamp, the E-07 was clearer, more incisive, more detailed and "more dynamically alive." On Revolver, the guitar on "Taxman" "just, like, rips out of the speaker." With Ella Fitzgerald, it was "goosebump territory." What makes it special, he said, is "the way it delivers this incredible musicality without looking like it's working very hard." It's "not hyping the sound. It's just, let's say, releasing it from the groove."
Watch The Audiophiliac's review
What Hi-Fi?: "impressively insightful and natural"
Ketan Bharadia, Technical Editor of What Hi-Fi?, called the E-07 "an elegant performer that sounds impressively insightful and natural," adding: "Build and finish are exceptional."
Stereophile: "peak analog"
In the February 2026 issue of Stereophile, Herb Reichert confirmed what we already knew, describing what he heard through the E-07 as "peak analog."
Reichert, who goes "cartridge-rolling" and hunts for obscure 78s, called it "an heirloom-quality product that should please the most discriminating phonophiles." A rear-panel grid of DIP (dual in-line package) switches sets moving magnet loading, while "super permalloy" step-up transformers handle moving coils. The front-panel Articulator uses the music signal to demagnetize the cartridge and transformers, "restoring a fresh musical expression," in the words of Luxman's manual. Built on a 3.6mm-thick copper bottom panel for a low center of gravity, the E-07, Reichert wrote, "presents like a venerable piece of Japanese architecture."
Technical Editor John Atkinson was just as impressed. "The E-07 is one of the best-measuring phono preamplifiers I have encountered," he wrote, with "vanishingly low levels of noise and distortion, and overload-proof input and output stages."
"The E-07 is the first phono stage I've used that made me feel like I was wringing every drop of performance out of moving coil and moving magnet cartridges." Herb Reichert, Stereophile
Download the full Stereophile review (PDF)
Tracking Angle: "elegant, transparent sound"
Which brings us back to Fremer. His review ran under the headline "Luxman MM/MC Phono Amplifier Combines Versatility, Design Excellence and Elegant, Transparent Sound." (MM and MC are moving magnet and moving coil.) He pointed to the newly developed super permalloy step-up transformers, the three independent power transformers, the six-position MC impedance switch on the front panel that lets you find your cartridge's sweet spot in real time, and a hefty 29-pound build on a stacked copper base.
"Overall the E-07 delivered musical excitement from the first record I played," Fremer wrote, "and it kept me happily listening for more weeks than the distributor probably wanted me to hold onto it."
Read Michael Fremer's review at Tracking Angle
When the most respected voice in analog tells you not to buy another phono preamp until you've heard the E-07, that's advice worth taking. Explore Luxman at Rhythm and find a Rhythm dealer to hear it.
