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Mystery "blue dial" 1970's receiver. (update: it's a Lafayette LR-1100)

scotlawrence

scotlawrence

Member
Hello everyone,
I joined a year or so ago, and have been enjoying the forums..
Now I need some help! please!

I am searching for my childhood stereo receiver. (not the actual one itself, but the same model.)
I was a kid in the 70's, and a teenager in the 80's..
our "family stereo system" consisted of a receiver, with a record player and an 8-track player plugged into it (it was the 70's!) ;) and two big speakers..all that equipment has long since disappeared.. :(
my parents moved a few times in the 90's, when I was in college and my early 20's, and I think my Dad just let it go, since it was all "old" and I think some of the components had stopped working..

So now im 46 years old, my Dad passed away a few years back, and im undergoing a wave of nostalgia! :) and im trying to track down that childhood receiver..and my wife and I want to play our records! :) which havent been touched in decades..so I want to set up a vintage receiver and a record player..:music:

The receiver was definitely an early to mid 70's "blue dial"..perhaps blue-greenish..it was nothing high-end, it was just average..maybe even low-end, but that's ok by me..

Going only by memory, a few weeks ago I started looking at photos..I thought it could be a Pioneer SX-434:
http://audio-database.com/PIONEER-EXCLUSIVE/amp/sx-434.JPG
based only on my memories, that looked about right..

but then I tracked down an actual photo of my receiver! nope..it's not that Pioneer..
Then I thought it must be a Kenwood..I looked at every on-line photo I could find..I just can not find a match! :( So then I searched this group for "brands with a blue dial"..got a list from a thread here..went to the "HiFi database" and looked at pages and pages of photos..nothing matches exactly! In the HiFi database, I looked at: Akai, Marantz, Sony, Sansui, Hitachi, Technics, Mitsubishi, Tandburg, Pioneer, Kenwood..nothing matches exactly! so im at a loss...here is the one photo I have of it:

i-jc58vxP.jpg


sorry for the poor quality..thats a zoomed-in crop of a general photo of the room it was in...its the best I can do.

Five evenly spaced knobs, all the same size, on the left.
four or five push buttons on the right.
two dials to the right of the blue tuner display..

anyone have any idea?
thanks,
Scot
 
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It looks similar to a Kenwood KR-5400 but not the same. Best of luck, I totally get the nostalgia angle of your quest.
 
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He might be right. I would have also suggested go peeking at some of the old rat shack stuff too....but that LR100 looks a match
 
Here are a couple nice pics of the unit..
(not the one I bought..just photos from the internet)

http://img29.olx.ro/images_mercador...litumer-receiver-lafayette-lr-1100-brasov.jpg

http://img28.olx.ro/images_mercador...iver-lafayette-lr-1100-boxe-sisteme-audio.jpg

now that I see it in clear photos again, (as opposed to my one fuzzy photo from the 80's) im really remembering how much I liked it..
used it constantly 1975 to 1987..(then I left for college in '87..and never really used it again)

Scot
 
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I like the looks, and I bet it sounds good. Kind of reminds me of my Superscope r-1220. The one you bought looks extremely clean and well-maintainted. I'm glad you bought it! Let us know what you think when you get it.
 
My old roomie had a LR-4000 (Quad) Lafayette that sounded nice....not exceptionally powerful (maybe 35 wpc, IIRC), but it got the job done quite well....
 
Whats the Lafayette have under the hood? I know Allied at least was re-branding Pioneer stuff. Wouldn't surprise me much if Lafayette was doing it too. My Allied 495 is a Pioneer SX-990 with different knobs. Looking at the layout and those split tone controls, I'm wondering if the Lafayette isn't also a 990. If its got those goofy speaker plugs on the back panel, thats a solid tip-off.
 
gadget73 said:
Whats the Lafayette have under the hood? I know Allied at least was re-branding Pioneer stuff. Wouldn't surprise me much if Lafayette was doing it too. My Allied 495 is a Pioneer SX-990 with different knobs. Looking at the layout and those split tone controls, I'm wondering if the Lafayette isn't also a 990. If its got those goofy speaker plugs on the back panel, thats a solid tip-off.
Click to expand...

Gadget,
here are a bunch of photos, including the back:

http://olx.ro/oferta/amplitumer-receiver-lafayette-lr-1100-ID3dD6F.html

what do they tell you?
thanks,
Scot
 
My first thought was "Pioneer". It isn't the SX-990 though. For sure not the goofy and somewhat despised speaker terminals that my SX-626 has.
 
I have a LR-1500TA receiver and everything I've read says they were made by Planet Research. Who Planet Research is, I don't know. There is no info I can find on Planet Research other than NASA type stuff.
 
I love my LR-9090. I found it on the sidewalk about 1 year ago and she's worked fine since day 1 and sounds great. Recently I added another curbside find to this system: A SONY XA20ES also in excellent working condition;


 
Wild! I had this receiver too and was just asking my brothers about it. I KNEW it was a Lafayette with a blue dial (I was around eighteen in 1981 when I had it), but I could not for the life of me remember the model #. Once I saw the image above, I was like—“YES!” Very nice piece of kit with a smoooooth sound, especially on the FM tuner. Great memories with that thing. Was trying to remember because I wanted to pick one up. Now that I know what it was? I know what to look for. Thank you sharip-eyed (and even sharper memoried) folks!
 

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