Sony Ads

It's a Sony! from 1994

 

Sony ICF-5900W from 1979

 

Some German Sony Goodies from 1988, the full catalog is here
https://archive.org/details/sony-neuheiten-1988/

 

Sony CFS-88L from 1982, this is much, much larger than it looks, maybe close to three feet wide? What you can't see is the beautiful blue dial and two analog VU meters above the radio dial. 2 x 12 watts, not bad!

 

I was really close to putting mine into rotation, the antenna needs to be replaced but when I first messed with a few months ago I thought it sounded pretty good.

 

Sony CF-520 from 1978, are those Redwing Boots?

 

That oddball from Sony 1972
Sony 9300WA Stereo Radio

 

Sony CF-302 from 1977

 

Right now I have the radio playing in the other room at moderate volume, fidelity is not an issue. I'm more annoyed by sonics with headphones on or when cranking a song loud, when you can really hear crappy equipment. I like listening to radios for ambient sound and do move around a lot so little radios work out great for me. The CFS-88L is a big boombox, maybe the widest made so you have to have a pretty big space for it.

I also think that with a lot of these boomboxes there was a trade-off with bling-looks and real-world performance. Back then you could get a huge boombox for a couple hundred dollars or you could get a smaller boombox, top-of-the line for over $1000, where they put the money into the sonics and less into the looks.

I think you were around back when HiFi Tom was looking for the best sounding boombox made? Over the years I've gotten some of his "test" models to try myself. Most are the 2nd category and more rare but they do sound good. Personally for me, the greatest limitation for boomboxes is the speakers, I can hook my AIWA 22 to it's tiny speakers or something much larger and it really opens up the sonics. I don't know if the early members ever added more substantial AUX speakers to get a better idea of the best sounding boombox, that would be interesting.

 

I always thought he was overly criticized for his quest for the best selling boombox, they used to be much more guarded about the nicer models or the grails. I don't know if he ever dabbled in Sonys, I do like the CFS-88S, the CFS-99 and the little XF-5000, I'd like to get a CF-590 one of these days and give it a ride.

 

Hopefully at the end of the day we'll leave lot's of information for any collector; the people in search of the best sound, the people in love with design, the people that want something cool to listen to, and the the group we love to hate but bring a lot of units to market, the flippers. Unfortunately dozens of informational websites have disappeared and very few new ones have replaced them.

 

Sony GV-S50 1993, these are so neat but look at that price!

 

Sony MDR-7's from 1980

 

Sony Pocket Discman from 1988

 

Sony WM EX-77 from 1992, JDM Version