I've had a fondness of Sony since my parents brought home a tiny portable Sony TV years ago. The screen was about 5" diagonal and it had a battery pack that must have been around 20 D cell batteries, it was huge. Those early impressions left good memories and probably programmed my brain to like the SONY Logo. Lately I've been looking for some of the early 70's mono boxes and have had some success finding nice clean examples that reflect high build quality not seen since. One of my newer finds is the Sony CF-450, one of their more popular radios in the 70's. This little guy is heavy without the four c-cell batteries it needs. Most of the buttons are metal clad and have a positive feel when you change positions. The tone and volume have a nice amount of resistance and are nice and firm. While the handle looks delicate, it's very substantial with metal plated sides and the best part is a detent at the top and bottom so it makes a very nice click when it locks into position. At the time these were made, SuperScope was the US Distribution Channel for Sony, and as most of you know by now, SuperScope owned Marantz. I have to believe that SuperScope borrowed components from these units and filtered them up to the CD and later the PMD line of recorders. I haven't had the chance to open up the Sony yet, and don't know if I need to, to confirm the design. I also don't have any c-cells at the moment and this takes a four prong plug to power up. I think I can use a radio cord if I can isolate the two right prongs. The upper two prongs are closer together and I can fit a cord on but if anyone had fired one of these up without the big cord let me know.
There's not a lot of information out there on these units, they most likely sold hundreds of thousands of these but they are slowly fading into oblivion. Here's some advertising tidbits from an overseas blog exploring sexism in advertising. I haven't fround the sleep timer on the unit yet but it does have a battery/record/tuning indicator that is pretty cool for this little guy. https://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/getting-sexist-and-sony-o-matic-in-1970s-singapore/
I presume you have seen the Radiomuseum entry. https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sony_radio_kassetten_recorder.html Amazing to think that this is now about 45 years old. Go back 45 years from then and radios looked like this. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1927+radio&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=HANzyxRQPdhHQM%3A%2CZtUm4-jfGXCwmM%2C_&usg=__-T_4ZA7ivpEJ7or6WySZAwb7UJU=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjC-fyvqtXYAhULB8AKHY1PC3cQ9QEIPDAG#imgrc=HANzyxRQPdhHQM: A shame that there are no prices on the adverts. In 1973 my Mother bought a similar Sanyo and as a teacher it cost here over a weeks wages. For people obsessed with prices, like myself, have a look at page 11 of this http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Practical/Wireless/70s/PW-1973-05.pdf No Sony (which would have been bought at a Sony Centre) but JVC Radio Cassettes and lots of Akai Then have a look at Situations Vacant on page 91. £50 a week was a salary worth boasting about in an advert.
It's unreal what these cost but then again, the only plastic is on the exterior, and that's limited. There's a million screws on the inside that had to be carefully assembled and most of these were done by hand. Did you catch the ad on page 5 of the magazine? There's a "twin turntable" unit (one unit with two tables) and the guy has headphones on, this must be one of the first DJ sightings!
By around that time Disco gear was quite common hence the advert. At school a friend had a brother who was around 18 at that time who brought in his gear to do our first year school disco back in about 1974 . However, looking back through the earlier issues adverts for Disco gear only started to appear in around 1971. This magazine has a couple of full page adverts for things like DJ mixers and "psychedelic lights". I'm not sure if they would appeal to the guys on the cover. http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Practical/Wireless/70s/PW-1971-08.pdf There is also some Sony gear in there. £199 for a 13" colour TV. That really was expensive. In the Royal Navy you could get £2000 a year aged 24, while Redifon were advertising £1248 a year. Back to twin turntables a now infamous British DJ claims to have invented the concept in 1947 despite the equipment being available in 1931. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_turntables_and_a_microphone I remember hearing an interview in which he said that when he requested two turntables the clubs manager responded "are the kids really in that much of a hurry".
You know your old when your checking out the ads in a vintage stereo magazine. There's a ton of ads in there Longman lots of cool stuff, or at least cool to look at, they still had a lot of junk back then.
By the end of the Seventies some of it was junk. Here is a picture from 1978 of a friend Phil with a unit that was donated to the local Air Cadets. I remember his more usual musical taste was Kiss. The hair was normally tucked inside his beret !
Cool Photo! While I wasn't a huge Pink Floyd Fan, those guys sold so many albums and the Wall Album was everywhere! I was just a little urchin when they were big and it might have been a little too advanced for me at the time. I really grew into KISS when they dumped half the band and went balls to the wall hair metal. Something about the often repeated chorus really spoke to me. The junk I'm talking about is the same stuff we have now, it looks somewhat cool on the outside but garbage on the inside.....
Love the Floyd and the Dark Side Of The Moon is a MUST HAVE album for any rocker out there. Wear a set of headphones and listen to this masterpiece. Mister X I too went coo-coo for coca puffs on the hair metal. I still think I have some Def Leppard acid wash jeans kicking about. There are however a few sizes too small for me now. They must have shrunk
We have a ton of shows here in town, one of the management companies that handles a lot of the 80's rock bands is local. I just got my Judas Priest Tickets but there's about 10 other shows before they get here.
