LXI Series

Unican_Eric

Unican_Eric

Pioneerious Collecticus
Does anybody know who made the LXI seriesfor Sears, I picked up a slimline turner and amp with a silver face in excellent working order for $40 Canadian including the taxes. I am impressed with the sound of this small system. The funny thing about these units is that there are no model numbers anywhere on the unit. It just says LXI series on the front face.
 
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All I know about LXI is what you said, they were/are Sear's house brand. Don't know who made them for Sears.
 
I got this info from another website:

Store Brands - Not Recommended

These are the units that department stores have put their own name on, like J.C Penney. Sears has Sears Electronics, Kenmore, and LXI. Canadian Tire had Pulser, Wal-Mart has Durabrand, and Radio Shack has Realistic, Genexxa, and units that carry the store name. Store brand electronics such as these are a real box of "Forest Gump chocolates" - you never know what you're going to get. Usually the store asks for bids from several manufacturers, and whoever will build 50,000 at the cheapest possible price gets the contract. Of course, when a manufacturer is asked to build a really cheap product that they aren't going to have their own name put on, how good do you think they are going to make it? The store branded electronics are always the cheapest line the store carries, and since the manufacturer could be anyone, I think these are best to avoid.
For a while Sears was selling stripped-down Sanyos, then stripped-down RCA for their own lines, now I'm not sure. Canadian Tire's Pulser was all stripped-down Daewoo, but Daewoo wouldn't recognize Pulser as their own, and refused to sell parts. Radio Shack had Funai building their VCRs for a while, which may still be true. And if anyone knows where Wal-Mart's Durabrand comes from, let me know.

I've never thought of LXI to be anything but average, low priced consumer electronics. Just a cut above Emerson.

DB
 
Well I asked for it.....:rolleyes: But in all seriousness they are not bad little units, They seem to be well constructed and the amp has some heft to it. I am glad that I bought them. I actually took out my Kenwood KR-7600 from the computer and moved it to the spare room to make room for the LXIs . But like always, I'll listen to this for about a month then replace it with something else.
Thanks for the input.
 
Funny thing I do know where Wally World's Durabrand comes from. They are made for them by Lenoxx Sound out of China. (Yup, "Lenoxx" not "Lenox" or even "Lennox").
 
sears used several manufacturers to bild there units. The Most popular ones Sears used was sanyo and Soundesign

The receivers and the small intergrated components were most Soundesign and the Power amps and average sized components were sanyo.
 
I just tripped over one of these today

A big clunking receiver. Of course, it does us a PLL for a tuner, that's phased locked loop to those of you who own real gear :scratch2:

Anyways, this damn thing is built like a tank.

It does use power packs, but at 80 wpc..... Sure would make a great barn or garage stereo.

The AM reception is actually pretty good.

It has speaker protection built in, so they weren't malicious in their design.

Edit:

talk about bringing a thread back from the dead...... 4 years baby. This should be a contest.
 
I'll say what I was told about LXI: An LXI is like a box of Forrest Gump chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
 
Back in the days when Compuserve was a major player, there used to be a list of Sears model numbers and who made what. IIRC, either the first 3 digits, or the three digits after the decimal were assigned to a manufacturer. Don't know where to find it these days.

EDIT: A quick search came up with this...

http://www.owwm.com/Craftsman/manufacturers.aspx?sort=2

If you click on the underlined headings at the top of either column, the list will be sorted on that basis.
 
I was going to say Fisher - I ran across that somewhere recently as being linked to Sears brand.

I don't see it in the list, but my 1st VCR, a Sears Electronics, was a Mitsubishi (actually had it marked as such and came with Mitsubishi batteries for the remote - funny what you remember!). Perhaps Canadian and US suppliers differed. Note there are some interesting names in that list - including Marantz, JVC, Pioneer, Sony, Technics, Yamaha, ...

Appears that LXI are Sanyo:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=191817
 
I have an LXI dual cassette deck that I believe is of Sanyo manufacture, as it looks identical to a Sanyo deck (although I don't remember the model #).
Bob
 
wow yeah old thread!

just thought i would add that some of the LXI stuff was also remarked sherwood..who did in fact sell exactly the same models under it's own name..i picked up an LXI integrated and tuner some time ago..the tuner had issues,but i also happened to have the sherwood equivilant on hand from even earlier...a quick swap of the black sherwood faceplate for the LXI's silver one and all was right with the system,except for cosmetics the two were identical...tho the system itself is nothing to rave about,it does look sorta cool,and even if not oozing with greatness,it sounds ok and is honestly quite a powerful beast
 
Well this is the first info I've ever heard about the LXI series. I have a whole system that I got from a friend and have tuned it up and I must say these amps really are tank, the heat sink and power transformer are so massive that it doesn't even get warm when I'm blasting a good 70 watts out of it.

I must have to say these are really well built, but are using cheap resistors and capacitors, up grading them does improve the sound quality and adding larger PS caps and bigger bridge rectifier gives the amp a little more juce.

Here I will post some picks of my LXI system.

The old sears equipment was allot better made than the new cheap china stuff made today so this kind of amp deserves a component upgrade.

For those who like to play it loud, rock on!! :rockon:
 

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You need to remember just how powerful Sears was in the 1950's, 1960's and early 1970's. So many of their private name products were ranked among the best you could buy. Over the last few decades product design and quality have fallen off, under the weight of intense competition.

Still, top of the line Sears products aren't as bad as we might like to think. As an example, in the mid-1970's I bought my first set of radial tires. They were Sears branded, private label tires from Michelin 's France tire facility. They blew away virtually every American tire on the market.

I recently got some beautiful tube units out of an early 60's Sears console. I don't yet know who built them, but the build quality was quite nice as was the tube set (12AX7s feeding 6BQ5s).
 
I fished a very heavy LXI reciever out of a dumpster. Initially I hooked it up for laughs, but it wasn't bad at all -- I thought the equallizer just complicated things, but it had plenty of power, a sensitive and well behaved tuner, and sounded decent by reciever standards. Sold it to a teenager for $5, I believe. He was pleased, and I didn't have to house it. Or explain it away...
 
Many of them were definitely Sanyo's. (same as Realistic aka Radio Shack). Some were definitely SoundDesign...I remember researching it back in the day...
 
ImaTube said:
Well this is the first info I've ever heard about the LXI series. I have a whole system that I got from a friend and have tuned it up and I must say these amps really are tank, the heat sink and power transformer are so massive that it doesn't even get warm when I'm blasting a good 70 watts out of it.

I must have to say these are really well built, but are using cheap resistors and capacitors, up grading them does improve the sound quality and adding larger PS caps and bigger bridge rectifier gives the amp a little more juce.

Here I will post some picks of my LXI system.

The old sears equipment was allot better made than the new cheap china stuff made today so this kind of amp deserves a component upgrade.

For those who like to play it loud, rock on!! :rockon:
Click to expand...
The inside of that amp looks alot like the insides of a Kenwood KA 3500, or maybe 3700.:scratch2:
 
What I remember about the LXI gear back in the early-mid 80's - it was interesting, but not enough to get me to buy any of it. A lot of it looked like Soundesign (from the back).

I did go to the other end of the mall to JCPenney's to play with their MCS gear, also. That stuff I bought (on clearance), and loved (still do) - maybe a little too much.

What about the Montgomery Ward rack systems from this era?? Who made them? Was it Pilot? That name is in my head for some reason. It sounded powerful in the store, but very muddy IIRC.

Oh well, nice OLD thread.........FWIW - an LXI 10 band EQ just went for almost $15 on that auction site. It looked like Radio Shack in the front, and Soundesign from the back (no affiliation).

The pics of ImaTube's LXI gear looks to be their best effort - nice stuff!

Rob
 
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