Planning to buy Accuphase E-480

Importing might save some money but you will end up shelling way more if the amp ever needs servicing :)
The quality of after sales service available here is subjective except few distributors. Now most AV gears service manuals are available over net and some extend it will help. Again Accuphase and Luxmans are bad here and no service manuals available except old models.

Yes.. it is good only as long as service requirements not rise.

You forgot customs duty
Customs duty can be claimed once GST invoice done. More over the customs duty is not on retail price. Which is on import cost which figure is much much lower and you may be shocked if you know.
 
Customs duty can be claimed once GST invoice done. More over the customs duty is not on retail price. Which is on import cost which figure is much much lower and you may be shocked if you know.
There is a portion of it which can be claimed (equivalent to igst). Not the full amount and definitely not on audio products. Ballpark taxation is over 42% total. Add that to the dubai price and you're in the India price ballpark. Add in another 10% for higher interest and transaction costs in India and you're there (in this case that offset the 10% UAE tax). This would be much lower for someone who can sidestep some import formalities (I've heard some distributors are able to do that but no idea who or how).

My guess is Accuphase charges a higher export price than what they charge locally. Otherwise its not possible that there is no country where their products are as cheap as Japan. This is not the case with any other brand. Eg Naim products are cheap in Dubai, Harbeth in Malaysia
 
Last edited:
My guess is Accuphase charges a higher export price than what they charge locally. Otherwise its not possible that there is no country where their products are as cheap as Japan. This is not the case with any other brand. Eg Naim products are cheap in Dubai, Harbeth in Malaysia
For your information, in many south east Asian countries Luxman and Accuphase products are much cheaper than here.

I am well aware most of the AV products landing cost including customs. I believe if a X product is available here on international price then a Y product of same kind also possible to sell.

I prefer to buy from local authorized retailer and many times knowingly paying 300INR for a product which is available abroad for 200INR and local dealer landing cost is only 100INR. I will satisfy myself, only the 100INR go outside my country as foreign exchange else it will be 200INR.
 
About 10 - 15 % higher than Japan.
The examples I quoted are cheaper than their home market

Your point still holds though. Basically the distributors outside of South East Asia seem to have a pretty large markup. That includes the Dubai example above
 
Congrats @essrand hopefully the thread helped with what we call "atma-manthan" (re-assement ) and a final decision :)
Haha no, it was a few days before this thread I had decided to buy. I was procrastinating over parting over the chunk of cash. This thread helped me finally fork over, so maybe in a way yes.

Maybe this might be useful to this discussion:

There's a music server made in Japan I wanted to purchase, in Japan it costs $3700, I contacted them (no dealer in India), they pointed me to their Singapore office. The international model for the same product, $5700. And this is not even through a distributor or anything, just their office in Singapore.

So depending on the country, Japanese companies set a price for their product different from home country. It seems.

Still better than its European price: $9000
 
Haha no, it was a few days before this thread I had decided to buy. I was procrastinating over parting over the chunk of cash. This thread helped me finally fork over, so maybe in a way yes.
I would have gone for it too but ad hoc pricing was too much for me emotionally...lol. Happy listening though.
 
Other than extreme markup I have never seen any other common factor among "audiophile" equipment. The amps discussed here may or may not sound good to various people, however I am sure one could at least equal it if not better it with a cheaper pro amp, and gain a lot more power at the same time. Audiophiles remind me a lot of snooty rich people drinking wine while waxing eloquent about it's subtle flavours, regardless of whether they actually perceive said subtle flavours, they will harp on about it. That said modern upper class India is nothing if not pretentious.

Not directed at anyone, a general observation.

OP, please forgive me but I have no idea about a fair price, however if you have heard it and like it and it doesn't pinch your pocket, by all means, enjoy!

This thread only serves to reinforce the above post IMO.

OP, have you decided on an amp and speakers yet? B&W? What music do you listen to?
 
Accuphase E-480 retails for 605000yen in Japan = 4.08L INR. See link below.


Say you put 30% markup (customs/shipping/GST) on this, 5.5L should be a reasonable price for this amp. It would be a pipe-dream to imagine a price lesser than this for this amp, anywhere in the world (except Japan of course).

For this price you can get (in India), the Luxman 38 series tube amp and pre combo. Which will probably outperform the Accuphase depending on your wattage needs.

Accuphase is stupidly priced because the US distributor marks it way up, and Indian dealers ape that, and think they can get away with that as well, but they can't. Even in the USA the street price is 20-30% off MSRP because of the inflated markup.

Luxman is a good alternative at this price point, usually 15-20% lower priced. I can't think of any other brand that is not Chi-fi to compete at this level at this price IMO of course. Not that I know much about SS amps been mostly a tube guy. Accuphase is the only SS I have liked (other than Technical Brain which is beyond my pay grade).
You missed the GST portion when you calculated the landing cost,Duty + Gst alone you get to 56% of the product cost then comes the shipping and customs which is not much for one amp unless you plan to carry it via Air.So the cost would 6,36,480 plus Airfreight and Customs approx 50-80K, so your landing cost would come closer to 7.20 Lakhs ( approx)
 
I am so hoping the new amp makes those DeVores sing.
Me tooooooo...It's been challenging to find a good amp for this speakers, very surprisingly, given its high efficiency and benign impedance.

Wow @essrand that's some eye candy. Even your AC has put on a nice patina like those old vintage watches. Would love to read up a review of the new setup in the coming days.
It's a 500 hour burn in time *sigh*

You missed the GST portion when you calculated the landing cost,Duty + Gst alone you get to 56% of the product cost then comes the shipping and customs which is not much for one amp unless you plan to carry it via Air.So the cost would 6,36,480 plus Airfreight and Customs approx 50-80K, so your landing cost would come closer to 7.20 Lakhs ( approx)
True. 6-7ish is a fair price for this amp. 8+ not so much.
 
Follow HiFiMART on Instagram for offers, deals and FREE giveaways!
Back
Top