just found this STEREOPLAY- magazine from ja. 1987 with a test of 18 portable cassette-player. Very interesting is the prices - a Sony WM-F107 solar was FAR MORE expensive than a DD-100 ! Test-winner soundwise was the DD-100, but only with original bulky headphones. In a review later in the mag. they say same sound-quality as a DD-100 you get f.ex. with a Sony DD-II and equivalent headphones - according to this they recommend as best extra-headphones the Sony MDR-51, the (still new available !) Koss PortaPro I or Aiwa-jets HP V 9 ...well, I assume it's all to personal taste - make your own decision ;-)
It is very interesting that some of these walkmans are not high quality and even from the start you could say DD100 would be the winner (or possibly Aiwa J09) Did they put in the ranking which one came to 2nd or 3rd place? and thanks for sharing
when you check in the bottom of eachplayer's discription you'llfind the point "Klangklasse", wich means soundclass
the DD-100 is the only one they classify as soundclass I - but in the review they say: only with the DR-S100 bulky-thing ! My personal experiance - as I own or used to own almost all of those players is, that the "cheapish" Tosh KT 4066 with a good set of headphones (Koss PrtaPro, or at home some Grado's) is at least as good...
Thanks for the info. I looked at it again and placed them in ranking 1st place: Sony DD100 2nd place: Kenwood CP 303 AIWA HS P 09 AIWA HS T 09 SONY WM-101 TOSHIBA KT-4076 TOSHIBA KT-4086 3rd place: Sony WM-R202 Sony WM-F107 TOSHIBA KT-4046 Panasonic RQ JA 2 AIWA HS-J09 4th place: HITACHI CP 35 HITACHI CP 45 R HITACHI CP 55 R TOSHIBA KT-4056 5th place: Panasonic RQ JA 62 Panasonic RX SA 77
Great post conrad, i had the koss porta pro 2 pairs, just cheap low end rubbish, sounded pants, anyway thanks for the post will read it later if i can see the screen
Thanks for sharing. I love this sort of thing. In case anyone didn't notice the cassette player followed by the cassette player with radios are listed in the magazine in order of price, ranging from the Panasonic JA52 at 130 Mark (which is less than half the price of anything else on test) to the WM F107 at 600 Marks. A very quick Google of exchange rates for 1987 gives 1.9 Marks to a Dollar and 1.5 Dollars to a £. So according to my calculations a JA52 was about $68 or £45 while the WM F107 was $315 or £210. I thought the prices seemed a little high but the Toshiba 4056 was £99 in Argos in the same year so 3 marks to a £ sounds about right. I was wondering why I couldn't find many cassette players in that particular Catalogue and then realised that it was for extra items only stocked at their Superstores. The Toshibas would have been outside the price range of your typical Argos shopper back then.
