Just pulled the trigger on a slightly beat-up AIWA 990! I've been keeping an eye out for one of these beasts for years and watching the value keep going up and up and up. While it has been well used for the past 35 years, it still sounds great. This one-owner unit was bought in 1982 while the young man was in college. He wanted the best sound for his dorm and ended up with this unit. While he said the original receipt was included, I don't see it but he said he paid around $385.00 USD. He mentioned he also had the books with it and he produced the owner's manual, a spec sheet, the warranty card and even a demonstration cassette. I've never seen an AIWA Demonstration Cassette and imagine they are fairly rare. This came with the cord but he also mentioned a 12v wall wart plug that it didn't have. I thought it was kind of odd to have both types of power but maybe somewhere in the world 12v is desirable.
Love these Mr x, be warned though if the deck isn't working it's the hardest deck of any boombox to fix, so i hope you're skills are good buddy
12V would be for car use. My Fathers Panasonic SG-J500L actually came with a lead to plug into a car cigarette lighter socket. http://www.stereo2go.com/forums/threads/triple-take-it-on-the-run-baby.1564/page-2#post-12907 p.s. I like the Sanyo clock in the background. I always thought the old logo like that was one of the best and the new one tacky. I have what is almost a miniature version To give people an idea of size the 2p coin in front is 1" (25.4mm) in diameter.
Yeah these are gorgeous boxes but Rahrah is right they have an obscenely complicated deck, however, once working the deck is very nice indeed. Im lucky mine was already done. Can we get a close up pic of the tape to pls?
The AIWA DMC-158 Demonstration Tape. I don't imagine there are many of these around and I've never seen one before for AIWA. I remember in the early days of ebay the Nakamichi Tape was going for big dollars. This one is in very good condition
I find it a little generic, not in a bad way but maybe copying other popular styles at the time. I might be wrong but I've got General Electric Boomboxes with the same type of layout and possibly other units down in the stacks and I think the very rare Technics Unit share this type of design. Of course Aiwa might have pioneered this style and everyone else copied it but I don't know. I do find the 950 to be a much better looking box but it might be classified under the military style that started to fizzle out in the early 80's. It does kind of remind me of Yamaha Components of that era but Yamaha didn't carry their very distinctive styling over to the boombox line.
Same here the 950 looks more aggresive.However this is a nice box to own and a rare one too.To me it looks like a sharp gf9797 had sex with a sony!But even second breeds can be good ones!
Why, I do believe that our Rising Sun Project has a blush-inducing way with words! I mean, Sharps canoodling (and then some) with Sonys?
It's nice Patron and I love having it, it actually was the start of my buying binge late last year, and the ensuing posting, but I'm still more drawn to the oddball units and these seem to appear from time to time. I'm with Risingsunproject on the less aggressive stance, part of the third wave of boomboxes getting gentrified for the home market by getting away from the military style of the mid to late 70's. Now this little guy would be a cool find, the AIWA CS-J50, I can't remember if anybody has one of these. http://tela.life.coocan.jp/hp030116_j50/j50.html
Yes, it's somehow a pretty rare Aiwa - a great find for Aiwa collectors, I had one (on the pic), scored at yahoo JP, sold it last year.
