This is what I really wanted back then, Vega-328 circa 1982. Measly 3rd class again, still, it is stereo, and looked rather attractive. Price? Only two average monthly salaries.
Did they export any of those models? We never had them over here, this is the first time I've seen them.
In the U.K. we got Vega shortwave radios and some small (about 6") Black and White TVs. Both those products were very competitively priced against the Far Eastern products. The radios had a nice wooden case, while the TVs had pretty coloured metal ones. I never saw any Soviet boomboxes. From the looks I would imagine they would have had problems selling them for more than half the price of a "Made In Hong Kong" box.
Indeed, before the Japanese got the market all to themselves, Soviet radios and B/W TVs were competitive. Tape recorders never were. VCRs - you gottabekiddin'. Turns out they did make ghetto-blasters in the USSR... well, at least in terms of their size I haven't seen them before. Here is a video where one like this is repaired: new motor, new rubber belt, new balance pot, autostop adjustment.
I have looked before for a BBC article I once read about VCR sales starting in the USSR but found this one. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-12-14-ca-519-story.html I actual got my first VCR in 1984. Back then they were available from £300 which was about two weeks average wages. With only four TV channels here, and (for a while) no censorship of the tapes, they were even more popular than in the USA. That boombox looks far better than the Vega one. Looking at the Vega one I was thinking that the small speaker grills are what makes you think it it will sound bad. With its big speaker grills, if it wasn't for the writing, the one above could pass for Japanese.
Soviet boomboxes were 7-8 years behind in terms of features and quality. Here's my Берестье-004 which was introduced in 1985 (made in Belarus), but it seems more like a 1976-78 model. And it seems they continued making them for several years, because mine has a stamp inside saying 05/1990, which if true, would be only 2 months before Belarus declared itself sovereign. I respect the fact that they made it themselves, instead of offshoring everything like the Americans did. I can't think of one boombox made in America.
Compared to the Vega that looks to be feature rich. Having included a Multi-Band radio and four meters in it, the only surprise is that they didn't put a TV in as well.
@CDV - thank you for the 'flashback' to my younger-self! my Daddy bought me that one! It worked like a clockwork from 1983 to at least 1996 when I left it behind in my Genetics Lab in Kiev and fled to the US. About the only Soviet-made electronics piece which never-ever failed me, unlike my Big Stereo or TVs. Probably the reason I have a soft spot for collecting boomboxes. The headphones from the ad were made in Orange and Blue, they lasted for about a month, and I clearly remember buying them in Orange because they painted my ears like a paintbrush, Orange was less noticeable At around that same time there was a Turntable for sale at TC (Torgoviy Center - MarketPlace) in N-sk which I wanted Sooo much, but never got enough Mojo to ask my daddy to buy me (nowadays I realize it was just a spare change for him, but my 45 roubles/month stipend must have blurred my understanding of Soviet's realities): Korvet-From Russia
Cool equipment, it's finally starting to show up for sale over here. So Jorge got a Funai and I decided to see if there was any info about the company, they started showing up over here around 1988 with VCRs and small TVs. This article is very hard to read but they shut down production in 1983, it says they made lots of European Boomboxes including Siemans and Telefunken, cranking out 15,000-30,000 units a month! Later articles indicate they merged with AMCOL in 1988 which might explain the brand showing up over here. The Business Times 1983 (Singapore)
^ I thought it was about their VCR production. Funai was the last producer of VCR and stopped making them five years ago.
Some company history https://www2.funai.co.jp/en/company/history.html You are right about the VCRs. I think most of them were sold under other, better known, brands, especially the combined VHS and DVD units. The Funai brand itself only appeared in the U.K. market when the big name manufacturers like Toshiba had switched completely to PVRs.
They were selling them as Funai in Russia in 1990s. It says "VHS PAL", I think all cassettes sold in Russia were recorded as PAL, SECAM was only the input/output signal compatibility option. Although not sure about that. Funny, this one even still has a plastic protector on the screen It also has "Made in Japan" in large letters - this was sort of a quality mark. The brand was not well-known, but "Made in Japan" cleared all questions This is how I remember them: PAL/MESECAM/NTSC playback on PAL TV. The latter option was very useful to watch American tapes. I still have a quarter-century old cassette with Tori Amos concert. Sorry for hijacking the thread, again
The logo and sometimes the font looked really similar to Sansui over here which didn't endear them to me. Most of the branded equipment was marketed as entry-level, maybe they didn't want to compete against their better equipment that was branded something else?
To continue the Hijack I have just realised it was 37 years ago today that I bought my first VCR, a Mitsubishi HS700B, for £340. My intention was to buy a Fisher Top loading VHS which Lasky's were advertising for the bargain price of £299, but by the time I got there at 11:00 AM they had sold out. I ought to find and try some of the tapes I recorded with it, including a three hour 1980s music retrospective broadcast on New Years Eve 1989. Back to Funai, they had a joint venture factory with Amstrad making VCRs etc here in the U.K. but the equipment was just labelled Amstrad.
Akihabara 1984, still a great place to spend a day or two but I can't help but think about the pizza joint with the craft beer a few blocks over, that was some good pie!
One of my favorites, the Sony ICF-5500W from 1977, I love this photo, too bad it's not better quality or a video. There's a few reasons this stuff was expensive, look at how many work stations this product has but it look more like quality control than assembly.
Perfect reminder of how Consumer Reports is not an expert in every product category. Only 2 paragraphs in, they say the reason boomboxes aren't considered hi-fi is because they have too much distortion. For proof, they cite the 10% distortion figure provided by many boomboxes. But that 10% occurs only at the listed maximum power output. Lower the volume knob, and the distortion would decrease. Furthermore, the fact that a home hifi receiver might list a much lower distortion (such as o.1 or 0.5%) does not mean that's the highest distortion it could ever produce. It just means that's the point when the engineers decided to stop increasing the output. Had they desired to achieve a higher output (in watts) for marketing purposes, the distortion probably would have increased as well. I'm quite sure the vast majority of hifi receivers could hit 10% distortion if you pushed the volume, bass and treble knobs high enough while playing certain recordings.
Some boxes do sound like crap at full volume no matter what the recording is. I think that's one of the hallmarks of a quality box is you can go full volume and it much more rare to hit distortion. Even still, if boomboxes were bad, car stereos were even worse, but they all seem to have had some really far out wattage numbers. 50 watts from a box the size of a Walkman.......
