A look inside a Lafayette LR-9090 receiver

[Pacific Stereo]

I had a 9090 come across the bench a few days ago, and I must admit that I have never seen one of these before. They're beauties!



This one was working, but had an intermittent channel and the owner wanted a partial restore done. I was hoping that I could nail down the OEM, but I am just not sure. Perhaps a member can come up with ideas. It's been said that these were sourced by Kenwood or NEC, but it feels like neither.

Anyway, here she is on the bench, cold.



The first thing I did was take a look at her. Here's a look at the inside.



The circuit boards are all Elnas, and the power supply is split between a stand-alone board near the front and a regulated section on the tuner board. Access is pretty good, and there are a number of nice touches that make service easier. Not as good as the Concepts, but still good. Here's a look at the power supply on the tuner board.



Not terribly exciting, except for the fact that the heat sink on the right is really tall. That part dissipates a lot of heat. But not too much is to be done here except for capacitor and pass-transistor change out. She gets freshened up, but it looks like I forgot to get a photo. So all right, it's on to one of the power stages.



This shouldn't be too bad. This side incorporates the driver for the power stage and the protection circuits and needs new caps and relay service. And then I discover something not technician-friendly. The board is... it doesn't... the board won't... ACK! You can't get to the board without removing the power transistors. Really?



Sigh. Really. OK, remove the devices.



Ugh. That is NOT what I had in mind. But it takes what it takes. And she's much better now. The output relay was too far gone to service, so it's been replaced, and now the input caps are film parts. Nice!



It turns out that the other channel is even more difficult to deal with because of construction. Well, what can you do except do it? After the power stage service, she got switch and control treatment, light bulbs and tuner capacitor service. And after she's all done, she looks like this.



And here's the bottom.



Of course, we got parts...



And we got beauty!







Owner will be happy.

[DaveInVA]

Cool old Lafayette. Kenwood made a lot of their stuff, in fact making Lafayette branded stuff was how Kenwood/Trio got their foot in the door here in the US.


Dave

[ke4mcl]

Was gonna say it reminded me of some old kenny receivers i parted out. The ribbon cable though throws me off.

[NAD613]

That model must have been towards the end of Lafayette's run. A very nice receiver. Nice work!

[retrokeeper]

A real beauty for sure,wouldn't mind find one someday to add to the Mantuary.That receiver actually got a pretty good audio review in some magazine I was reading thru the other day.I do have a Lafayette catalog featuring this receiver,they touted its features quite proudly!! Rob

[jdurbin1]

Doesn't this share the same flaky rotary power switch as the Setton RS-660, and similar to the ones in the Pioneer SX-55-/650 models? If so, I would definitely inspect & decarbon it, and consider adding either a relay or an SCR to handle the brunt of the current passing through. There's an excellent thread on AK with details on the SCR mod, and a couple detailing relay solution though I am sure you don't need guidance on that part.

Pretty receiver, and nice work as always. Somewhat inspires me to dig the RS-660 out and start a parts list as the big bastard was lobbing cap cans and other misc. parts at my head the last time I had it powered on. It's too pretty to leave it like that, should be up and singing instead of nursing a bad attitude down the hall in my spare bedroom.

John

[Scorpion8]

Originally Posted by retrokeeper

A real beauty for sure,wouldn't mind find one someday to add to the Mantuary.

Rob .... how would you know?!? There's so much stuff there.....

Beautiful work and great pictures as always!

[Pacific Stereo]

Well, since you got me thinking about it, I went ahead and did a little no-extra-charge service and took the switch out and inspected it. The switch is actually in reasonable shape and the NO side has a decent amount of life left in it. I did clean up both sets of contacts (the NC side is as clean as can be, of course), and so there are a few options. The contacts are interchangeable, so we can always switch them and deal with the muting side later. One could hack up another switch and fix those contacts if need be. But the SCR (or relay) mod is probably a good idea, and we'll see what the future holds for this one.

In the meantime, I did make a little mod and that was to replace the cap with a true snubber. The cap only helps prevent erosion on break. The snubber works for both make and break. Here's a look at old & new.

[Warped Bezel]

Originally Posted by jdurbin1

Doesn't this share the same flaky rotary power switch as the Setton RS-660, and similar to the ones in the Pioneer SX-55-/650 models? If so, I would definitely inspect & decarbon it, and consider adding either a relay or an SCR to handle the brunt of the current passing through. There's an excellent thread on AK with details on the SCR mod, and a couple detailing relay solution though I am sure you don't need guidance on that part.

Pretty receiver, and nice work as always. Somewhat inspires me to dig the RS-660 out and start a parts list as the big bastard was lobbing cap cans and other misc. parts at my head the last time I had it powered on. It's too pretty to leave it like that, should be up and singing instead of nursing a bad attitude down the hall in my spare bedroom.

John

Add the SX-450 to that list of nasty rotary power switches and thank you for the tip!