Hello, I’m a new comer to this forum. The reason I’ve joined is because I’ve acquired an 85 pioneer sk 757f. I gather that it’s extremely rare but I don’t know much more about it than that. If anyone here could give me a short rundown on it, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thank you for your time.
Welcome, mate! Nice machine you've got. A few cents: http://boomboxery.com/forum/index.php/topic/28126-pioneer-sk-757-restoration/ Old topic but lacking pics due to a forum rundown once: http://www.stereo2go.com/topic/index.php?content_oid=362147801659052101&board_oid=278965687828548229
Welcome to the forum LTVariety! Yes the SK-757 is somewhat rare but they do pop up for sale from time-to-time. Pioneer made some iconic boomboxes, up until just after your model, all of them were nice, even the little mono boxes of the 70's have really thick plastic housings. After your box they started dabbling in generic three piece boxes with minimal build quality. As a kid in the 70's, Pioneer, Marantz or Sansui were the working man's stereo of choice, sure there was better equipment but in my college town these were the big guys. I've got a handful of their offerings and love them all, along with Superscope/Marantz, they were the General Motors/Ford of the portable boombox world. I don't know dates but the 70's models tend to look like traditional boomboxes, Pioneer started with the Centrex (budget) Line, I think this was due to home audio people looking down on boomboxes and Pioneer didn't want to dilute the brand name. While part of the budget line, these are some of my favorite 70's boxes, very heavy, durable and extremely good looking. Sometime during the late 70's Pioneer started making pretty wild looking portables, models with several large speakers in a more compressed housing, these were branded "Pioneer" and Centrex disappeared. During this time and for the early 80's Pioneer Boomers took a life of their own with an 80's modern look, this design approach was a radical departure from what everyone else was doing. These boxes are also well built and the design looks as cutting edge now as it did back then. I'm pretty sure they never released a dual cassette box, until the late 80's, which would reflect a desire to not compromise the cassette audio quality. I think they also tried to minimize rotary dials and toggle switches disappeared. There was some cost-cutting during this time and Pioneer revamped it's component line with units that would look good on the set of Space 1999. You won't find a lot of information on most Pioneer Boomboxes, and towards the top of the line it's even rarer. The beauty of collecting boomboxes and Walkmans is there are thousands of different models with some having very low production numbers.
