The Biggest Lafayette Receiver: LR120DB

The similarities here are somewhat easier to spot then some of these house brand receivers. Sometimes it is easy to spot the similarities (in this one the heatsink design Now if we can only solve the mystery of who made the MCS 3125 (possibly NEC), or the Project One Mark 1500 (I'm 99% sure it was Pioneer or Hitachi).
 
Hmmmm. I've been playing the LR-120DB all day and every once in a while, the music will cut out for a second, the relay will click, and then it will come back on again. Could this be related to the f'ed-up power switch?
 
CUlater said:
Congrats - $30 makes you the winner in the value sweepstakes! :banana:

I haven't worked on it yet, just using a PC power switch center to turn it on and off for now. I've gotten an aversion to using the built in switches on many of my receivers anyways, as I've had more power switches fail than anything else on them. I pick up those PC power switch things whenever I find 'em cheap for this purpose.

I do remember that when I was looking at the switch it being an Alps model, so hopefully someone makes an equivalent replacment...LMK if you find a replacement!

Anybody out there have a service manual?
Click to expand...

What do you think of the overall performance. Pretty decent I'd say. Too bad Lafayette came to an end shortly thereafter. This was clearly their BEST.

-- Chris
 
Any Lafayette Collectors: Raise Your Hands

Even moreso that Sanyo, MCS or Fisher, Lafayette is one of the most unrecognized and undervalued lines of vintage audio gear. The Company can trace its origins back to the beginning of modern audio as we know it and died sometime in the early 80's.

As for their Receivers, they garnered critical plaudits with the late 60's LR-1500T, which was actually made by Pioneer. In 1974 they came out with the LR-3500, a 47 wpc unit that looked just like a miniature SX-1010. And, just a few years later, out came the LR-120DB, the "Big, Bad Boy", at 120 wpc. Some (yrly) say that this unit was OEM'd by Luxman and could be a "bro" to the Luxman R-1120. However, another unit in that line, the LR-9090 was OEM'd by the same manufacturer responsible Setton's RS-660. Go figure!

Unfortunately, the rest of Lafayette's gear was not all that great. They had a smattering of Quad Receivers, headed up by the LR-5000, however, they were not competitive styling-wise with the Pioneer, Sansui, Marantz and Kenwood models. Their separates were all low-budget and low-power. At one point, they had a pretty advanced early Dolby Cassette Deck. Their turntables were only average and the Criterion Speakers were only OK, except for some models that incorporated ESS Heil Drivers, and may have been made for Lafayette by ESS. Lafayette didn't survive long enough to come out with a CD Player.

So, anyone else out there collecting Lafayette? What do you have?

-- Chris
 
thumbnail (7).jpg thumbnail (3).jpg thumbnail (4).jpg thumbnail (1).jpg thumbnail (7).jpg thumbnail (3).jpg thumbnail (4).jpg thumbnail (1).jpg thumbnail (1).jpg thumbnail (4).jpg thumbnail (3).jpg thumbnail (7).jpg Hey guys, I'm David. New to the site. I've checking out these old threads for parts information. Yes I've got a few Lafayette toys. :) I have the LR 120DB, LR 555A, Criterion 3003, & Criterion 2003A. Of course over the years the the speaker foam has deteriorated & been replaced with new drivers. The Heil air motion transformers still sound great, although I removed the passive radiator, & now running dual dayton audio ds315's. They hit hard & tight. The 2003A's woofer was joke, but the massive horn is fantastic. Replaced the woofers & tweeters, B.I.C. RTR EV15's, & pioneer tweets I scavenged from my other boxes lol. Great woofers, but they'd really bang in a bigger box. That's the next project lol! My tech says the LR 120 needs a power transformer & he can't locate one. I'm scrolling through pics here & comparing,..& yesterday I found a guy in Canada that has a PT for the Luxman R1120. Waiting for his email response for compatibility!..Fingers crossed :)
 
Welcome to AK.
I'm a long time Lafayette fan.
Bought an LR-2020 new in 1976.
Bought an LR-9090 new in 1977, package deal (those were common at Lafayette stores) with a pair of 2002+ speakers and some turntable.
All of those are long gone.
Around 2010 or so got the nostalgia bug, bought another 9090 off ebay, it arrived with a dead channel so I sent it back.
Few months later bought the big boy, a LR-120DB, been pretty much trouble free except for the off/on switch (oddly enough it's a different switch than the notorious prone to failure 1515, 2020, 5555, and 9090 speaker selector/off-on switch).
Still have it but changed to separates a few years ago.
Your 2003A's didn't have the inversed foam surrounds? Those on the 2002+ seem to have lasted forever based on the occasional listings I've seen for them on ebay.

I also have two MCS 3125's, Guess I just like off brand "monster" receivers. The Lafayette and MCS's take me back to a happy time but a time in which I could not afford to buy them new.
 
David Greene said:
[ Of course over the years the the speaker foam has deteriorated & been replaced with new drivers.
Click to expand...
Seems that most people here refoam drivers, not replace. That's the way I prefer to go. Try checking out looneytune2001 on EB if you've still got the original drivers. You might want to look over the econowave thread if you like modding speakers.
I just finished replacing the electrolytic capacitors in my Lafayette LR-310 and am very happy with the result. Beautiful sound. Far better than my Yamaha AVR.
 
For me Lafayette was the place to go to in the late '60's to check out their gear, check out the modest selection of records, etc. I did get a pair or two of Criterion speakers. In the mid 90's I scored a couple of their tube amps ( La-70) and tube pre-amp, I recapped the amps and still use them from time to time, great sounding amplifiers. Yeah, too bad the are no longer around, times change.
 
Thx guys, I definitely will check it out! Hopefully I will get a email response from AW electronics about the power transformer in the next few days!
 

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Having been involved (retail and 10 years service) with Lafayette for roughly 22 years through to the end, I'm still a fan. A lot of the equipment I had, I've moved on but still have a few pieces. The LA-74 4-ch amp is still going strong along with the LT-D10 tuner, T-4000 turntable, SQ-W, CD-4, DNR-50 and few other accessory pieces. At one point I had three of their high end cassette decks, RK-D600 but sold them off and now just have one Kenwood cassette deck. Also have an assortment of various Criterion speakers. Their LT-425T was a fantastic AM/FM tuner which I had for many years. Same tuner used in the LT-1500T/TA and several other Lafayette receivers.

I've had the pleasure of being able to touch and play with just about every piece of Lafayette Hi-Fi, radio, CB, amateur radio equipment at the retail level for the early 60's through to when we closed the doors, and then many times when I was wearing my service hat. When we closed several of the NJ stores on the first bankruptcy restructure, all the service parts, unclaimed equipment, manuals, stuff that didn't have any stock numbers were going to be thrown out, so most of it found its way to my location.

The LT-120DB was made by Lux but it was extremely difficult to get any replacement parts for that receiver from them.
 
 
peteCWA said:
Having been involved (retail and 10 years service) with Lafayette for roughly 22 years through to the end, I'm still a fan. A lot of the equipment I had, I've moved on but still have a few pieces. The LA-74 4-ch amp is still going strong along with the LT-D10 tuner, T-4000 turntable, SQ-W, CD-4, DNR-50 and few other accessory pieces. At one point I had three of their high end cassette decks, RK-D600 but sold them off and now just have one Kenwood cassette deck. Also have an assortment of various Criterion speakers. Their LT-425T was a fantastic AM/FM tuner which I had for many years. Same tuner used in the LT-1500T/TA and several other Lafayette receivers.

I've had the pleasure of being able to touch and play with just about every piece of Lafayette Hi-Fi, radio, CB, amateur radio equipment at the retail level for the early 60's through to when we closed the doors, and then many times when I was wearing my service hat. When we closed several of the NJ stores on the first bankruptcy restructure, all the service parts, unclaimed equipment, manuals, stuff that didn't have any stock numbers were going to be thrown out, so most of it found its way to my location.

The LT-120DB was made by Lux but it was extremely difficult to get any replacement parts for that receiver from them.
Click to expand...

If you were an " Associate Store " around 1971-72 I most likely shipped the gear to you from the Hauppauge Long Island warehouse where I used to work. We used to ship a ton of stuff out of there.
 
My entire NJ association with Lafayette was with their gaggle of "regular" retail stores. I was their longest part-time employee and my activities were in retail and service for those stores. I was also on call especially on weekends if a store needed some additional help for whatever reason since I didn't need any training. Working there during weekdays was a problem since I also had a full time real job.

For two semesters when I was going to college in NYC, I had the unique pleasure of working the NYC Union Square store Thursday and Friday nights. Most of the employees were all originally from the 100 6th Avenue store. I was told at the time, I was the only gentile ever to work there. It was also a union shop so I could not sell in Hi-Fi, radio, CB, or any other department unless I had permission from the full time person working that department. I was permitted to work the parts counter. It was great fun working with these guys and a tremendous experience learning the NYC selling processes. They really taught me a lot in the art of selling which I've never forgotten.
 
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HI Misternova7...and thank you for the pictures. It's been a long time... For those following this thread... I am the designer of this receiver as I was the audio buyer for Lafayette during the mid 70's. I can officially confirm for you all that this product was designed to my specifications by Luxman and was the ONLY product they ever built for us or anyone else at least through that period of time. I can tell you that our objective was to simply build the finest sounding and most feature laden receiver on the market as a flagship for our hifi business.
The prior line up had been introduced 2 years earlier by someone other than me...LR2020, 3030, 5555 and 9090 and were built along with many of the earlier products mentioned in this thread by Cybernet in Japan which at that time was a mass producer of all sorts of consumer electronics including CB radios and hifi power equipment... and was purchased in the late 70's by KyotoCeramics which you might recognize today as Kyocera! The quality of the 5555 and 9090 was recognized in several glowing reviews but we we're looking for more power and to make a name for ourselves as something other than a house brand. We also didn't want to be locked in to one manufacturer for our needs...so on to Luxman. The toughest part of bringing the LR120db to market was to get Luxman to agree which required us to make no mention of the parentage. Anyway, the result was worth it and it had the excellent sound we wanted and features galore that you don't see anymore... microphone input with level control for karaoke or out for tape dubbing, adjustable FM sensitivity, two center frequency turnover controls for each of the bass mid and treble pots, two position hi and low filters, 3 speaker pair choices in any combination, adjustable power meters, DolbyFM, tape monitoring for two decks AND dubbinb in either direction....etc.
Of course by now, one of these would need some refurbishment... but once restored, you'd still have one of the finest mainstream STEREO receivers ever built IMO.
FWIW...I was also prime on the T series of turntables, Critereion 2001/2002/2003+ speakers, Criterion/ESS Heil speakers, PipSpeaks and some other stuff of the 70's era. Happy to try to answer any questions people have on those.
 
Wow Camsail, that's quite a first post. Welcome to AK.
As mentioned I've been a Lafayette fan for a long time. Fan of the later receivers at least.
Still have an LR-120Db though it's been a few years since I've used it.
Odd, I have just a touch more respect for it now that I am aware of its Luxman pedigree.

Can't remember what TT came with my 9090 package, it was functional but nothing really stands out about it in memory.
2002+ speakers were the other part of the 9090 package. Best I can say is they played loud.
I've mentioned before here on AK, the 2002+ had inverse surrounds, and when I see any nowdays (ebay) they usually still have the same inverted OEM surrounds.
Seems those surrounds outlasted a lot of surrounds used by other brands.
 
Thanks for the welcome...funny I was just thinking of the 120db so googled it and up came this board and thread. Last week Gene deSalla of Audioholics poste a video of the 10 most important speakers in his life and led off with your Criterion 2002+... note that it was NOT one of the 10 best speakers in his life...merely the first one to get his attention!!LOL... and YES...they were designed exactly to be a LOUD speaker with a good size box and plenty of slam from the 12" woofer and were purposefully designed to rock out with a built in hump at 56hz corresponding to the lowest note on a bass guitar... and a front vent a la the Bic Venturi design. What happened was that we had gotten a consumer reports best buy on the 2001 which was $99 bucks ...and we were selling them by the truckload...so we needed a big brother or two to give people a reason to spend more $$... we went and used the same tweeter as the 2001...but angled them left and right for better dispersion....used the same fostex horn for the midrange and bumped the woofer up to 12" and made super efficient so little amps could still rock the house. The 2003 used a bigger horn and a 15" woofer for the disco freaks!
The company that put those together was SanyoKogai in Japan who made a lot of Radio Shack speakers too. They took in TREES on one side of their plant and put out speakers on the other! That series was about value and rock & roll...not quality of sound...but they were well made and lasted a long time. As to your turntable...that whole series was made by Fujiya and I still have a working one that my daughter uses. If yours was woodgrained it was the belt drive T-1000, Gray Vinyl...Direct Drive T3000 and manual direct drive with upgraded tonearm was T-5000. Fine maker...but back then only the low end used belts...it was all about direct drive until we came to our senses!
Hope that fills you in a bit on the history of some of your heirlooms! Best...Cam
 
Thanks for the info.
I will say I played the 2002+ pretty hard at times and never needed to have them serviced so that says something.
Being a self admitted and not ashamed to say so Disco Freak I may have liked the 2003.
Pretty sure the TT was was wood grained. I might have a picture somewhere.
I'm also pretty sure I have the 9090 package sales slip but I think it became unreadable years ago. Looks like I may go on a treasure hunt, it's not like I don't have time with our current stay at home order that was just extended another two weeks...

I bought a 1979 Lafayette catalog (the last one produced I've heard) on ebay around 8 years ago. Mentioned it on here and some fellow contacted me, he was trying to build a Lafayette website and asked if I could loan it to him so he could make some scans. I sent it to him, guess he got what he needed and sent it back. Lost his info, don't know if he ever got the website up and running.

EDIT/ADDED-- found the sales slip.
1 LR-9090 receiver
2 Criterion 2002+ speakers
1 Garrard turntable.
---------------------------------------------------
$699.88
Tax $28.00
Total $727.88
 
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I'm pretty sure I scrogged up the turntable model numbers... but the woodgrain was semi auto belt drive. The other two were semi auto direct, and manual direct. We added a fully auto direct with a separate motor for the tone arm drive in around 1978. You do indeed have the last LRE catalog...I wrote all the hifi copy for the Lafayette stuff shortly before I got laid off when the company was closing things down. The second budget line of receivers in that catalog was produced by Rotel for me...as was the integrated amp and tuner which was a favorite product of mine. I grew up in Syosset near their HQ and remember electrifying my accordion at age 13 with their kits ... you used to take a ticket to get waited on and order by number from the catalog. Lotsa folks waited for those catalogs more than the one from Sears, :D
 
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