You hear a UHER?

One of the more uncommon portables on this forum, one that might have disappeared completely if it wasn't for member autoreverser showing his awesome collection, the UHER is one of the understated cassette portables that should be closer to the top of the chain.

autoreverser has posted some of his over the years but they seem to be more of a Europe Model than USA so they don't come up for sale too often. I found this gem a few months ago and it now sits proudly on my shelf with some of my other forgotten gems.

So my impressions of the UHER CR 160 AV are, wow, the faux leather case is amazing, very well built for protection but even after 38 years it still looks kind of new. The control panel is nice since everything faces the user, the cassette is a push and drop style, similar to automotive decks. The controls are plastic membrane push button and the volume/level controls are rotary dials, all very well built.

These were built for the entertainment industry as audio monitors, they have three speakers, two for stereo separation and a center bass speaker (subwoofer). I have never seen this on a small portable before, this might be the only unit with this feature. I'm not sure if it really sounds better but when new it might have. There's a few boomboxes out there with this arrangement but I feel this wasn't for a gimmick at this size.

I tried to dig deep into these units and found some great information, this was supposed to be the budget version of the Nagra, which at ten grand was serious money in the early 80's. The UHER was much less and closer to the Marantz-PMD 430 and the Sony WM-D6c in pricing and ability. When I get to my files I'll post more, these are really cool units that are unique in their own way.

Sorry none of the play lights are on, it's actually pretty loud and everyone but me is asleep, even with the volume down, it's still pretty impressive.

 

Yeah you are right Auto loves his Uhers and he's had a lot of units over the years so there must be something to them, great score.

 

It's a great unit and it had some nice reviews at the time. With our snow day today I did some research into the unit.
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1986-01.pdf




and another review on Home Studio Recording Magazine from 7/1984
http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/uher-cr160/4077

 

Thanks speedy2.0, autoreverser has been plugging these for years and I think they're still a great deal in the used market.

You should start a separate thread on that tape rewinder, that is ultra-cool, you can tell at close to $50.00 USD it was full of goodness. It took me a minute to figure out the red line is the tape speed, very nice pick up.

 

There's not a lot of rewinders out there, I posted a Sony Unit and I think Techmoan reviewed that one and maybe one or two others but none as cool as the Maxell. While there was a million VHS tape rewinders of varying quality the cassettes were ignored for some strange reason.

You made me think when you talked about the leather case, it's actually that awesome material that was perfected in the 80's....plastic....I looked as some of my other units and only my Technics RS-646DS has a leather case, all of them are the same padded plastic. I didn't know there were two versions of the 160 (CR-160 & CR-160AV), now I need to figure out the differences.

 

The Uher's are more rare here than in Europe where they were used much more. It seems like we got the high-end models and thus not as many are around. I did read that Nixon's White House Recorder was a Uher.

 

Nice find, I really like the industrial look of these units and the leather cases worked perfect, just enough protection so these players could survive decades.

 

Found this during my searches, the UHER CG-332, It has to be small or is it? Are those 1/4" jacks on the left?

 

So is that a full size deck with a car deck transport?