Thanks for your post and for stirring the old memory pot. Lafayette certainly played an important role in the formative days of Quad.
Dwight
I'm happy to have done so. I worked for them for 14 years, and then was offered a job as a National Sales Manger for PIckering - hardly something to turn down after so many years in retail. Lafayette was the foundation for many who pursued careers elsewhere in the audio industry, and was regrettably bankrupted by one person, and one person only: Arthur J. Blackburn, brought in as President in 1976 direct from J.C. Penny.
Blackburn thought everything was a "widget," and that if a certain widget didn't sell, then all that was needed was to put it in a warehouse for a few years, and then it would somehow come back into vogue. He used this inane thinking when he ordered the purchasing agent for Citizen's Band (CB) equipment to purchase a staggering
$15 million (at cost!) of 23-channel CB equipment just after the FTC announced that, after a certain date, and prior to this equipment's arrival on U.S shores, that only 44-channel equipment could be sold. No company anywhere could overcome such a huge loss, and that $15 million brought a 55 year-old institution tumbling down. Hopefully, somebody shot Blackburn.
Insofar as your Quadaptor, Lafayette actually beat Dyna to the punch with its own "Dynaquad" adapter which had a
geared volume control, and came with three sets of speaker wires: 2 3' cables to go from the amp/receiver to the adapter; two 6' cables for the front speakers; and 2 15' cables for the rear. All were 16 guage zip cord, with RCA plugs on one end to go into the adapter, and stripped, tinned ends on the other, all clearly marked "+" and "-."
Once SQ hit, the Quadaptor never sold again, even with its price reduced to only $15. And, you experienced quad for the first time, just as I did: via this Dyna setup, with four identical speakers (KLH-6's in my case).