Sony Ads

Thank you Mister X for finding these magazine ads and posting them! I found this thread last Summer and have been checking in to see its progress ever since.

I took your advice, earlier in this thread, back last year, to go into the archives and check out old magazines like Stereo Review. I found the above Sony D-555 ad in the January 1990 Stereo Review, on page 8. On page 80 of the same issue the D-555 was mentioned under "Systems for Small Spaces" as $450.

(D-35 / D-350 first ad I could find was August and September 1990 in Esquire Magazine. But that ad disappeared in the following months.)

I searched Google like crazy for every scrap of info I could find on Sony D-555. There was a specific brochure for the D-555. It is there on hifi-archiv.info as two large .jpg scans (2217kb and 2985kb). The Brochure /Prospectus is, unfortunately, in German. It looks to contains a lot of cool pictures and info. If anyone goes to Google and searches for "D-Z 555 Prospekt" (with the quotes) it will be the 2nd result.

Now can anyone find the English version of this D-555 brochure? That... would be just incredible. It must be out there somewhere?

 

Yes, it can be a lot of work trying to find these old ads. I mined the World Radio History listings too, I started to believe there were no more good D-555 ads in English. Must be a few good ones in Japanese print media? Thank you for the tips on old deleted Japanese sites.

 

Old Forum area, I just tried again, but not many results found there. Head-fi had a lot of interesting Discman comments and tech details from around 2002 time period... I copied pasted everything of interest into text files for my own reference. Only a matter of time before the info is lost or too hard to find in a practical manner.

There must be Sony official press release archives where actual release dates of certain models can be found. It appears that the D-555 came out late 1989, probably December, the D-35 / 350 "flagship of 1990" was around late Summer of that year. The D-303 also appears in 1990 catalogs apparently, though I have not found those yet. Another poster once said that it was listed / described as a "special purpose" discman due to its features. Indeed these are the only 3 classic models I have and like. 1990 was the Great Year for Discman. Therefor this is the key year for publication searches and archive work.

 

D303 - 1991 Sony Brochure by Hyperscope posted Apr 16, 2023 at 9:56 AM

 

Found the link and got a series of their annual reports for years I am interested in. The 1992 year report highlights the decline in sales and slump in Yen exchange and domestic consumer spending etc., "In order to cope with such a business environment, we endeavored to promote rationalization of the operation of all divisions..." It would appear from this time on that all the "cool stuff" withered on the vine for the most part in my opinion.

I can only speak for myself, but apart from a couple of MD players, not a single Sony product after about 1992 is of interest to me. (Oh ok, maybe the SCD-777ES SACD deck, and a couple others )