Lafayette
radio corporation
Lafayette
radio corporation
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Lafayette Radio Electronics (LRE) was founded in 1920 and has quickly grown to become one of the largest mail order retailer companies in the field of electronics. It was commonly called "Lafy". Lafayette sold electronic components, radios, ham and CB equipment, measuring equipment, audio equipment, music equipment, etc. through catalogs. At that time, the equipment for amateur radio and CB was selling particularly well, because even in the USA in those years, telephone communication was expensive and not available everywhere. There was also no Internet replacing these media today. Anyway, the United States always had the largest number of registered hams in the world. In the mid-1950s, the company had two large depots in New York State and a huge number of authorized stores. In the 1960s, Lafayette entered the audio and HiFi market, offering a wide selection of amplifiers, receivers, loudspeakers, tape recorders, microphones, headphones, etc. Some of this offer came from the USA and some from Japan. However, the products sold were almost always "branded" by Lafayette. The tube receivers offered by the company were mostly made by Trio / Kenwood. Therefore, they shared construction solutions and components used with Made in Japan products. However, they were very different in appearance. The "branded" ones had a more solid appearance. This was due to metal knobs and frames around the front panel. Of course, aluminum. The tuning indicator was a magic eye, and the stereo indicator was not there (but why is that in the LR-800 model description). Stereo tube receivers sold under the Lafayette brand had the LR (Lafayette Receiver) symbols followed by numbers. In addition to them, the company also offered tube amplifiers marked LA (Lafayette Amplifier) supplemented with numbers and tube tuners LT (Lafayette Tuner). Here, too, the symbol was supplemented with numbers. The company operated until the 1980s to be eventually beaten by smaller new sellers offering more aggressively cheaper and the same. The brand re-appeared on the market in 2003. |
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