Another Lafayette 550 popped up on Ebay today..
While these are becoming quite rare, These must me compared to Lafayette's biggest competitors of the day.
The obvious targets were McIntosh, and Marantz. I was good friends of Ed Duda, who was one of Lafayette's
design engineers. His expertise was the power supply and as he called it "the Gingerbread"
To make them Look good! After the final design, and prototypes were built, Part of his directives from the owner of Lafayette
was to further cut the amount of components to reduce the final costs. After more than a few times this happened,
Ed would just put in Bogus caps and resisters, that were not needed just so he could later remove them to satisfy the owner's wish
While there were some LA550 factory built units, most were the much cheaper Kit version KT550's.
Lafayette was for the most part built/designed to be the budget choice for those that couldn't afford the Fisher, Mac. Marantz made pieces.
Much like Heathkit Eico, Dynaco, and a few others. Many of these amps as well as the Revised HK Citation 2's also sold as kits, were Stripped
just for their Premium output iron, by those that felt they could make a superior sounding amp.
These are Nice Powerful Amps, but frankly not even as good as the Citation 2's, and definitely not as refined as the more expensive brands.
THE 1ST 100 LA550's were hand built, with matched and selected components,
Kinda like blueprinting an engine
By Mr Ed Duda so that all the magazine's, and reviewers could test them and verify the stated
specs.
