When I was a kid my boombox was my voice. I was thinking about the deeper meaning behind my love for boomboxes. I think for many of us it goes beyond the superficial pop icon status the boom box holds in popular culture. In so many ways as a child, I was silenced…to the point of lasting damage. That GE 3-5252A was my megaphone. It empowered me and shouted for me when I couldn’t speak or shout for myself. It laid my intentions and feelings bare for a family that refused to hear them otherwise. Volume = visibility and empowerment. I could not be ignored with the volume cranked to 10. Absolutely glorious. I suppose in a more superficial way, size = status. My little GE wasn’t much of a boomer, but it was mine that I bought with my own money. I pined for a chrome-laden giant, but my family was really poor. As an adult, owning a few mid-end and a few grails really brings me joy. I get to take care of that kid who didn’t even get clean clothes to wear. An SCR-8 feels like a Lexus in my life. Maybe this sounds sad and negative but it’s not. Radios brought me joy my entire childhood. I’m grateful for it. It’s weird how something like a radio can hold so much meaning. That’s the under-the-hood look at the meaning boomboxes hold for me. What about you?
My first boombox was a Panasonic RX FT-500, nothing amazingly special, and probably hated by most people on here, but for me, I loved it! I had it connected to my Amiga via the RCA input, I made mix tapes with it, I took it to my nan's to listen to music when I didn't want to watch the tv, so many happy memories. I lent it to a mate when he was decorating his flat and never saw it again, which truly pi**ed me off, but I have another one now, along with some of other models that were out around the same time.
Well for starters I was never a kid. I was a child. Why can't people use the word children? Ever Google the word kid? It's a goat. I was never a goat.
My Mother has a Major in English, so she is always correcting me with the proper use of words and grammar. Autoreverser, are you a goat or a human?
btw, to stay „on topic“, my first ever box was a Sanwa7050. even mine getting lost over the years, i was lucky to find another one a few years ago (even posted that pic allredy here somewhere):
Growing up through grade school I had a General Electric reel to reel and then I graduated to a shoebox cassette player 'a Yorx brand'. I do not remember having a boombox untill I bought this for myself in the year of 1985 for my birthday. This was before I got into buying boombox's, which started around the year of 2005. Sanyo MCD-Z27 Double Cassette CD Remote Bassxpander (6:17) minutes
I don't think anyone under the age of 40 will ever appreciate how great it was to be able to record music off the radio etc. I remember getting my Amerex AC107 (which wasn't even a Radio Cassette) back in 1976 and recording Gary Puckett "Young Girl" off the radio because it was the first track played after unpacking it. Of course 45s were available before cassette recorders but they were expensive. Trying to remember the price I found a thread in a forum which, using real examples showed that through the 70s and most of the 80s a 45 was the price of a gallon of petrol. LPs were better value providing they had a decent number of hits on them. Once a record had dropped out of the charts they were quite difficult to find. You also were unlikeley to hear it on the radio as there weren't any oldies stations back then. Having bought the LP back in the day, I reckon the reason Stars on 45 was so popular, reaching No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 was that it gave people a chance to hear snippets of songs they hadn't heard for years, and they honestly felt that if they didn't get a recording of it they would be unlikely to hear again for many years. Nowadays, if I want to hear The Beatles "I want to hold your hand" I can go on Youtube and choose between listening to it on their Youtube Channel or watching them perform it on the Ed Sullivan Show
Here's my first.... https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/i-found-my-first-boombox.2250/ Not much but it was perfect for the 1/2 pipe and a hot day of skating. Us kids grew up when recording sound was the latest and greatest thing, music off the radio ands shows on TV. The first boombox I heard was playing Highway to Hell in the ice rink concourse around 1978, that was life-changing to hear something so loud from a portable tape deck. Shortly after, my neighbor got a killer JVC, military style, and the rest is history!
When I was a child I never had a boombox or a Walkman. Because I kind of came along at the end of that period and missed it. So I am compensating for that now, right? Or rather, after the Discman phase, I was looking for "something else to get into" and was musing over whether any of these ugly plastic boxes referred to as boomboxes or ghetto blasters were "any good". My definition of "good" being very personal and a bit quirky I suppose. Small well made and good sounding with some vague notion of having the right look. Or something. Yeah. Next up: Probably a few of those digital recorders that also double as great audio file playback devices and can make great binaural or "holophonic" recordings.
Sometimes i try to teach people same way, especially when i`m worried by the growing bad quality of speech here. But in the most cases like this it could be a lack of ability to surrender the existing trend... My first Boombox, as i was a child, was a Universum CTR 2374. After 4 years it began to eat the tapes, bad mechanics, and no way to repair here in the GDR.
First one was a Sanyo M9988 bought new. Second and last one was Sanyo M9998, also bought new. Still have it. Recently got everything working except the AM band.
OK, I'll play When I was a kid, my boombox was... my passport to making tapes of the music I wanted & taking that music where I wanted to go. My first was a Christmas present in the early 80s - a Philips AR073 (mono radio cassette). The tape misbehaved (what I now know was a 10-minute job to fix the pinch roller), so I soon replaced it with a more reliable but lower quality Hitachi TRK-5350 - a budget mono: As soon as I could afford it I upgraded to stereo - a Philips D8130 then a larger D8134: & finally my much-loved Hitach 3D7 ...surely, you don't need a pic of that one ...but the original reason remained - taking my music where I wanted to go - that was independence for a music fan in the 80s.
Back in that time I wasn't thinking about boomboxes I was thinking about _______ with the ladies in the car. My first car was a '62 Chevy Impala. I don't even remember what radio it had in it if it had one at all. My second car which was a '65 Pontiac Bonneville and that one. I do remember it having a AM FM radio but the special thing about it was it had a reverb on the singular rear speaker so that gave you a simulated stereo sound. Yes, just one speaker in the dash and one speaker in the back with a reverb amplifier attached to it. I thought that was interesting.
i started out like some of you guys, i had a Single Mono Radio with cassette, i will always remember walking up the road with my first radio, Pink Floyd - Another Brick in The Wall had just been released and i was blasting that, i don't know what happened to that radio, but then, because we was pretty poor and boomboxes was expensive, i used look through catalogues, i used to dream of owning the Amstrad 8090 with the pull out walkman, then i saw the Sharp GF990 and loved the look of it. but my dad bought me the GF9500 in 83/84 brand new for my birthday.. but that was the start of my collecting. been collecting ever since. no idea what got me in to boxes, it feels like, i didn't choose them, they chose me, it's all i have ever known, i even sold up a couple of times and promised myself that i was done with radios, but it never lasts long and i end up with 40 radios again.. i know it's a sad scary subject to talk about, but now i'm in my mid 50s i know "that time" is heading my way, so i know that soon i will have to sell them off, because i just don't want my kids to be left with the problem of clearing them out and having to get rid of them when i'm gone. but what a great Journey it's been, Boomboxes have kept me sane, if i would have never had them in my life, it would have been pretty miserable and empty.
