The Ultimate Marantz, Superscope, UNIX Boombox Thread

One of my favorite brands of audio equipment is Marantz. There was something about the 70's marketing that oozed quality to a very young boy and was also way beyond unobtainium for me or my friends. Over the years I've collected a few Marantz Boomboxes and Personal Cassette Players and have always loved the quality and famous Marantz Three-Martini Sound these units always produce.

Marantz has an interesting history because they built a product so nice they had to sell it at a loss. Overwhelming debt forced a sale to Superscope in the 60's (who also was Sony's first US Distributor). Superscope really seemed to love tape technology, one of the reasons they brought on Sony, and they marketed to the very early boombox (portable cassette player) market, through the 70's until the early 80's.

Marantz was again spun off early in 1980 with ownership or distribution rights by Marantz Japan, Phillips and Superscope. It's pretty confusing since these other companies didn't have worldwide ownership or distribution rights. I get most of my information reading old Billboard Magazines in Google Books, feel free to contribute if you know more.

So when I try to find more information on the Marantz Boomboxes it's pretty limited. Reli's Boombox Wiki has a great list but it's not entirely complete, I think the old S2G had a list years ago that I can't find and BBx might also have a list.

Several different boomboxes fall under the Marantz Name, the most common is Superscope, marketed in the US as it's "budget" line. This is kind of misleading as these boomboxes and radios are extremely nice, I feel like the home audio guys motivated the dislike. In later years the Marantz Name seemed to phase out Superscope but identical units could be found with both names. I think this had to do with the distribution rights. Marantz Japan also made UNIX Branded Boomboxes, while I don't own any of these, except for the micro-system in another thread, they go for a lot of money on the Japanese Auction Sites and don't seem to seen outside of Japan.

Our old member ARKAY also mentioned years ago that he'd seen Universal and Standard Branded Marantz's and I believe him. Marantz Japan owned Standard Radio (Japan) and I think Universal was a Taiwan Manufacture of audio products that Marantz Japan also owned.

After reading all of this I'm hoping some of the old-timers will come out of the wood work and help build a nice library of these understated boxes. Marantz was one of the very first companies to jump into the portable cassette business along with AIWA, Phillips, Sony and they should be considered one of the cornerstones of boombox history.

Please post your boomboxes by Marantz, especially the extremely rare old units or the monster PMS Series!

 

In the early days the first portable radios were all mono, only one speaker for you young people. The first Superscope Cassette Radios were radio cassette players and they were mostly mono. I don't have a time-line for production so if anybody has dates please upload those. I'm going to throw up this tasty CR-1100 as my first unit. I know there's going to be some discussion on if these qualify as a boombox. My opinion is that if I can bring it to the beach, have some suds and listen to AC/DC with my friends, then it just might qualify. The CR-1100 was the #2 unit from 1976 after the CRS-2000 Stereo Boombox in the Marantz Lineup.

Most of these units will have wording on the back, usually "Designed By Marantz USA," This one is somewhat odd because it was produced in Taiwan and not Japan. The Mode Indicator on the front has a white bar that comes down when the tape deck is engaged. This unit does not have working lights and I don't know if there are any. A cool feature is TAPE/PA (public address), it says MIX on the front so you could have some fun MC'ing. A common feature in these early units is the rounded white plastic antenna tip, this is original Marantz.

The ad states $99.95 USD, this must have been for the CR-800 Unit. This was big money back than, a little transistor radio was a few dollars and a car was around $2500.00.
Made in Taiwan, FACTORY CODE NO. 0910

 

Thanks for contributing! Beautiful Units, even that little Bustang 3.5 Unit is an arm breaker. Here's some early articles showing Superscope overseas expansion. Also it's interesting to read about how they were really interested in tape sales and duplication.

These articles from Billboard Magazine tell an interesting story, my opinion is that Superscope loved the tape technology and was positioning itself as a big player with entry level, mid level and high end equipment. Sony, watching their largest distributor buy up manufacturing, but locked into a long term contract with Superscope, must have been livid with these developments. I have to believe there's a bigger story here that was never reported.

The first article is dated 12/74, this shows how Standard Radio fit into the mix, they had manufacturing in Japan and Taiwan.

Sorry these are out of order, but the last article is 10/71 where Superscope buys Standard Radio but tells Sony they won't be distributing tape decks in the USA to compete with the Sony Products Superscope distributes in the USA.

 

Today's contribution is the Superscope CRS-2020, a really nice little box from 1978. This was the entry level stereo box and Reli's Site has it at $125.00 USD new. While small and missing some of the nicer touches like metal-clad dials or any metal trim at all, it still is a very pleasing box to look at while still being very basic. In case your wondering CRS stands for "cassette radio stereo" and CR is "cassette radio" with no stereo. This would almost be considered a girls box with it's smaller size and weight, the larger boxes tend to get very heavy.



I'm adding on to these older threads when I get more information including this stereo2go.com exclusive, a very rare Marantz Superscope CRS 2020 Cut Sheet, this may be the first time this has been seen in decades, it has a lot of great information on this little unit.




May 7th, 1979

 

This is off an Ebay Listing, a fairly rare Marantz Calibration Tape. It would be cool to take the basic design and color and make an updated version to display in your tape deck. I don't think Marantz ever had their own line of tapes which really surprises me since they really were focusing on tape decks in the mid 70's.

Edit: upon further research, Superscope had some magnetic tape brands including the popular kid's stories on cassette tape with a book. Marantz seemed to have their own brand of tape loading machine with warehouses in Detroit and California.



This guy stocks a ton of NOS tapes including this Superscope Gem.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sealed-SUP...ope+cassette&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0

 

This is from Billboard 10/9/71 right before Superscope really started putting out the early radio cassette players. There's a cool thread from an old Marantz Guy on TapeHeads where he describes how management would go to Japan and describe what they wanted and six weeks later they'd have a finished product. I don't see any Sony design cues in the Superscope Cassette Radios which makes me think Sony didn't make any of early units. I noticed that my early units were also made in Taiwan, one of the companies Superscope bought into (Standard Radio) had manufacturing in Taiwan. Some of my early units have a factory code on the back, if you have one please update your photos with the code and country of manufacture.

The lawsuit at the end is interesting, I think it's against ABC Warehouse, they'd have the full page newspaper ads with a million little electronics listings with dirt cheap pricing. Some of the early Sony Cassette Radios were several hundred dollars when new, they must not have liked discount pricing.

 

Here's my little Marantz Superscope CR-330L, just like the other units these rarely show up for sale but hopefully by posting these wonderful little units we'll avoid what happened in another thread I posted where the guy took a little Superscope and broke it up for it's parts. I always think of a car forum I read where one of the youngsters had just bought a cool old BMW E30 Model. He wanted to "upgrade it" and was questioning what kind of VW engine he should put in it.

This unit is also made in Taiwan and notice it's a three band unit. This also has inputs for a PA and I think you can mix it over tape or radio, kind of cool early DJ unit.

Back in the old days of the forum, if you posted anything made before 1980 a few guys would complain that they weren't boomboxes, I love these early legacy boxes just to see what the design evolution was. The cool thing with Marantz Superscope is they were one of the first players, they had excellent credibility with their high-end tape units (and audio), and in the end they built some of the biggest, baddest boxes of all time.



I found this on ebay, the background looks like one of the members homes, hopefully they don't mind contributing to the site. This is the Marantz Superscope CR-900, another very rare mono model. With the number of these mono boxes, Superscope must have been releasing around 3-5 a year.

 

Another thing I've noticed with the larger boxes made in Japan is the Miyako Name on the back information plate. The company is still in business and it looks like shortly after Marantz bought into Standard Radio they formed Miyako Electronics, maybe for the boombox line?

http://www.miyako-marantz.jp/company.html

1972 October Miyako Standard Co., Ltd. established (100% owned subsidiary of Standard Industrial Co., Ltd.) 100% subsidiary of Marantz Japan · Established as Miyako City attracting enterprise No. 1

March 1975 Miyako Standard Co., Ltd. changed its name to Miyako Audio Co. · Started integrated production of audio products

April 1975 Becomes a UL · CSA certified factory to be a type B electric appliance manufacturing plant


Edit: I forgot about a great thread on the vintage knob website from 2012, scroll really far down to see the Marantz Information. Axel had some really good information on stereo components but not a lot on boomboxes. I have no idea how he put all of this together but it's very informative.
http://www.thevintageknob.org/tvk_talk/viewtopic.php?f=1510&t=2395

I found this receiver for sale made by Miyako Audio, it looks to be late 70's




Here's a BMB Digital Echo AV Amp Made by Miyako Audio




And a Marantz 1150



And this UNIX Unit



Beside Miyako Audio, there's also mek, Marantz Electronics LTD. with four factories
http://www.model22x.com/en.html





Wikipedia Japan, translated through Google
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%83%9E%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%84&edit-text=

 

The Superscope CRS-2000, might be the first traditional looking boombox from Marantz Superscope? The labels indicate it's made in Japan. Reli's CRS-152 above and a stereo cassette deck with two speakers (CS-200) might be the other entries for the first although they are stretching the definition.

I thought the CS-200S should be added for a couple reasons, one, it's kind of an early "compo" type system, separate components carried in a bag or box, plus I don't ever remember seeing a traditional cassette player before that had stereo. In the 70's every family had a cassette deck like the CS-200 but they were mono and you would record everything with it. Before these early cassette recorder/players there weren't a lot of options for recording sound inexpensively.








Sun Stereo (California) Ad May 20th 1976



September 17th, 1976

 

Two cool mono units, these might only have been available in Japan but they were a little cooler than most mono radios with the removable grill. The Superscope CR-2480 and CR-3500 in these photos both have Japanese FM Bands. If you haven't seen this site yet in the "another cool Japanese Website" it has a ton of boxes on it.
http://www.geocities.jp/yumesawanachi/radio/marantsu-cr3500.html

Here's a Japanese Blog where he talks about his prized CR-2480, he mentions the removable grill is unique to Marantz.
https://www.tinyhouseperiodicals.jp/archives/7732




Edit: I just found this Superscope CR-2450 that came up for sale in Japan

 

This might be the best of Superscope's Mono Boxes, the Superscope CR-4500. I always loved the military styled boxes of the late 70's that took their design cues from actual military radios. Most of them are big, heavy, chunky and have a lot of cool switches on them. In Japan it seems that the military style boxes also served as a means to receive shortwave broadcasts from all over the region. You'll see the letters BCL (BroadCasting Listener) on the front of these units and a multi-band dial, I think this is the only Marantz Superscope BCL Radio and even these are super-rare, this photo is from a Japanese Auction from several years ago.

 

If anybody out there has complete catalogs, please post!

 

Another of my little mono boxes, this is probably the most basic and bottom of the line Marantz/Superscope Mono Boxes, this little CR-1050 still has a little heft to it and is not a bad looking box with it's brown chocolate exterior. This is made in Taiwan with factory code 0910 and has to be from around 1978.

This little box makes me think about Prince who died a couple years ago almost to this day, I was down the road on some sales calls and heard breaking news on the radio and I decided to drive by his studio, Paisley Park, to check it out. I was one of the first there along with 10-15 news crews, little did I know that Prince was living in his studio at that time.

Last night I was reading about a job position as a curator and archiver for Prince's Personal Items which numbers in the thousands, it turns out he was a Walkman Aficionado and used to carry them around to record his musical inspiration. I can imagine him carrying around something like this little Superscope, or something nicer like the PMD line of recorders, hopefully the collection will be sorted out and on display soon.







I've got the Superscope CR-800 Service Manual, if you haven't seen one of these you can pretty much build a unit from scratch, it tells you every part, screw sizes and full size circuit board prints. PM me if you need a full copy, when I get a chance I'll post the manuals I have but they are several pages long.

 

The barebones CRS-1800, made in Japan. a little different than the CRS-2000 with out a tape type selector switch and a front panel that shows which tape button is pressed. This isn't mine but from an auction site, these are super rare but look to be entry-level.

Edit: The Superscope CRS-1800 is an update to the Superscope CRS-2000 with a mechanism that shuts off all modes of operation at the end of the tape. It features "matrix stereo" as opposed to "discrete stereo" delivered by separate amplifiers that drive optional external speakers. This model retailed for around $200.00 in 1977

Do these really have a separate amp for external speakers? Some of my other Marantz Superscope Boomboxes also have Matrix, now I'll have to play with it. I always thought of Matrix Sound as having to do with quad stereo or something funky after quad didn't catch on.




April 4, 1977


November 11th, 1977