Fully Restored Lafayette LR-400 Stereo AM/FM/MPX All Tube Receiver & Matching Lafayette Speakers!

For sale is a rare and mint condition Lafayette LR-400 15WPC stereo AM/FM/MPX all tube receiver with the era-correct & matching ultra-thin Lafayette-made "bookshelf" speakers. Everything has now been restored by us to better than new condition (more on the restoration below). We purchased this setup from the son of original owner who purchased them new in 1964! This amp is typical Lafayette/Japanese tube amp with fantastic quality transformers, great circuit designs and ultra high quality made in Japan tubes throughout. The performance of this setup after restoration is quite surprising - the amplifier and speakers of course pair very well together and the performance of all of the different functions is fantastic! The tuner pulls in stations incredibly well and the MPX/stereo FM circuits all work perfectly as well. The phono stage utilizes DC heaters and thus has incredibly low hum and noise which really allows the killer Japanese 12AX7 shine in this application! The output tubes are actually the original Japanese 6BM8 output tubes that still exhibited great test results on our TV-7 tester as well as very solid low noise performance in the circuit itself. These along with the 6GW8 are our favorite small output tube because they provide such an incredible sound in such a tiny package - really much like a 7591/7868 audiophile quality sound in a smaller package! Lafayette claims 15W output but this is probably closer to 10-12W continuous if one is trying to maintain full audio bandwidth. As most find out...even this humble amount is plenty to power most speakers to levels past where they will actually be used.

Cosmetically, as mentioned above, the amplifier and speakers are in truly mint condition! We rarely find Japanese units that are this clean - it was obviously never stored in a garage or exposed to any corrosion-causing elements. It required a light detailing and a good dusting really as well as cleaning the dial glass so the new LED's look as good as possible. The solid metal knobs machined aluminum knobs have a great feel and all cleaned up to mint! Please study the pictures carefully and ask any questions!

Electronically the amplifier was restored just as we would treat any other vintage Japanese tube receiver. The power supply is rebuilt with all new diodes, any underrated or obviously failing resistors/wire are replaced and of course all electrolytics throughout are replaced with modern high temperature, low impedance, long life parts from Nichicon, Panasonic or Kemet. Next the bias circuit and the power amplifier are updated again with any obviously failing or failure prone wires/resistors being replaced as well as replacing all electrolytic and film capacitors throughout. Any and all of the notoriously failure prone Japanese gray paper in oil capacitors are replaced throughout the entire unit! Next the preamp and all other sections are rebuilt with all new film caps to replace the gray PIO caps and new electrolytics as well. This is not a small task...there are usually dozens upon dozens of these parts to replace in these amps and it takes quite a bit of time to work through them all.

Lastly the power cord wiring and transformer/primary side wiring are addressed with any bad solder joints or wiring either touched up or replaced as well as wiring in a thermistor to both slow start the amp (good for the old power switches) as well as slightly reduce modern wall voltages (good for the tubes and transformers). Any and all controls are cleaned multiple times until any dropouts or scratching is eliminated and all switches are free from distortion. All sockets are cleaned and tensioned as needed as well until there are no issues with distortion/dropouts from dirty tube sockets. After powering up the amp and getting all voltages/bias points etc verified, the tuner receives a full alignment on all circuits and the performance of the phono stage is verified for RIAA compliance and noise performance.

The speakers were simply recapped with new bipolar electrolytics and all drivers were checked for operating condition. Together with the amp and when properly rear-loaded against a wall...the speakers will put out a LOT more sound that one would expect. When balanced to taste with the tone controls, they achieve a warm yet still detailed sound that is not hard to balance out with the bass for a nice full-bandwidth sound. They're rare and very cool - a perfect fit for the receiver really!

The receiver and speakers will be shipped so they arrive as they left here. We spend a lot of time on these restorations and know how to package so that even heavy-handed carriers can't break anything. The speakers will most likely be shipped together in a separate box from the receiver and both tracking numbers will be provided once shipped!