This Lafayette bass amp came to us recently and it led us down an interesting path of inquiry to find out just what it was we were looking at.
This gorgeous thing is a lower-wattage tube head that runs a couple 6L6 power tubes at about 60 watts and the cabinet has two 12″ Bass speakers. It turns out it was made by the famous Japanese company Univox in the late 1960s. So what’s with the Lafayette brand name? Maybe you’ve heard of Lafayette…
Lafayette Radio Electronics was a Long Island, NY outfit that started out in 1931 as a catalog-based, mail order company and apparently grew very quickly. They advertised in electronics magazines and their products were focused around gear for radio kits, and audio stuff like microphones, speakers, tape recorders and the like.
By the mid 1950s, Lafayette Radio had a couple retail stores in New York. By the 1960s Lafayette Radio had “Associate Stores” that were affiliated and stocked products from their ever-expanding catalogs which now featured other gadgets like cameras and musical instruments.
As the brand grew, more retail stores opened across the US. and Lafayette Radio started to have hi-fi equipment and musical gear manufactured by others under their branding. The bass amp pictured is a product of this era, made by Univox and available through their catalogs and retailers. Other Univox products were sold through Lafayette as well that kept the Univox branding like their famous Super-Fuzz. You could also pick up a Uni-Vibe apparently as well as other Lafayette branded effects like Fuzz-Boxes and the Echo Verb.
By the end of the 1970s, another brand was expanding fast and in heavy competition called Radio Shack. This and a few other unforseen obstacles brought the eventual demise of the company and they filed for bankruptcy in 1981 and quickly closed all their locations.
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