Upbeat Magazine from India 1989, some interesting companies mentioned here. I love the first photos "TDK Squeal" with the skateboarder! https://archive.org/details/upbeat-october-1989/page/n23/mode/2up
Amateur Radio from 1987, it's interesting what you find, this is a press release for the Sharp Twincam Boomboxes in a magazine for shortwave. Regardless, these are cool boomboxes although some are "budget models." The Twincam is two cassettes right next to each other in the cassette tray, Sharp is the only manufacturer I've seen that used this type of "dual cassette."
There's also a Sony Minidisc Player and a really nice Casio Portable TV, I don't remember that model.
I'm starting to forget what I've posted, some of this stuff may be duplicates, hopefully this nice review of the Sony CF-580 isn't. From 2009, Antique Radio Classified Magazine, it even gives Stereo2go a mention at the end!
A cool article out of The Straits Times (Singapore ) from 1976! A very early Crown Boombox siting and the meaning of "The Searcher" are all found here. The Crown Photo looks sooo old, it's amazing how timeless some boombox designs are.
AIWA was a dominate force in cassette decks but hit the same wall that most other Japanese Companies did in the 80's, labor costs went through the roof. Moving production to local markets helped but sometimes we didn't see the same quality equipment being released. Was it because the work force wasn't as skilled or the market demanded cheaper products? The first article is interesting, maybe the first manufacturing for AIWA in Singapore? The rest kind of fill in the blanks, they moved cassette player production there, keeping the money products back in Japan. 1976 1989 1987
AWIA wasn't the only one to move manufacturing, JVC also did it in 1979, it looks like cassette players were the prized product to move. It's hard to tell what had the biggest advantage to getting offshored but cassette players seemed to be the favorite by every manufacturer. I feel like the black and white TVs they're talking about were mostly portables, by this time people wanted color TVs.
And then the demand started to wane, it says this was due to video products. I have a feeling the high cost of players and quality made it a big purchase that also lasted a few years. When video players started hitting a few hundred dollars, everyone was getting one of those and it was also a big purchase for a household. Before this you may never see a movie unless it was on late at night or Saturdays, movies like James Bond were only shown on Sunday Night ABC here, maybe twice over a dozen years, video was a whole new world where you could see a movie you liked.
JVC Exciting World of Music from New Nation (Singapore) 1972, I bet this was a neat place to visit, at the time they had 17 portable cassette players!
Some of the dual decks do some amazing things, I didn't know you could add a vocal track when dubbing, from 1982
