This is my first boombox, if you’re willing to accept me calling it that, since I started collecting cassettes about 6 months ago. I was looking around at older units from the 80s/early 90s when this popped up in front of me. I really liked its contemporary styling and the feature set was very nice. Dual decks with relay function, CD, radio, external input and even a remote control. The seller advised that tapes ran too fast, but it would probably just need the speed adjusted. So I rolled the dice and a week later a nice big box arrived with this packed inside. I tested all the other functions, which all worked 100%, before popping a tape in to see exactly how fast it was. Yeh, it was fast. Roadrunner fast. Like fast forwarding with the head engaged fast. I quickly shut it down and started investigating and found that all 4 pinch rollers across both decks had practically disintegrated. Well actually, the rollers weren’t that bad, but somehow the plastic axles to which they had once been vulcanised, had shattered. Leaving the rollers to float around their axes. The capstans also had some surface rust on them. No idea how that happened as I couldn’t see any signs of water ingress. I engaged the mechanism, hit play and gently wrapped some 3000 grit sandpaper around the capstans, moving up and down until most of the rust was gone, but I hadn’t started to take off any remaining chrome plating. The next challenge was finding replacement pinch rollers. The service manual is available online and I found the required part number, however it was out of stock everywhere I looked. I started looking at other Panasonic rollers that were available and found something that looked very similar, RXP0053. This was an arm and roller assembly, but the rollers simply snapped out of the arms. I ordered two and they ended up being perfect. The roller and axle dimensions were exactly the same as my dead original parts. Installed them into deck 1, put my test tape back in, crossed my fingers and pressed play. Perfectly timed music greeted my ears and I grinned like a Cheshire cat. Ordered two more then headed to a friend’s place where he had a frequency type speed test tape and some monitoring software. The test was 3.15khz and it bobbed between 3.145 and 3.155. We were both blown away when it showed such little deviation from true accuracy and we decided not to bother trying to adjust the speed. Sorry for the spiel, but it was somewhat of an adventure down a new road for me and I was very happy my gamble paid off. I recently took it with me on a trip to a mountain cabin and it was used every day and worked faultlessly. I’m just truly in love with this thing and can’t wait to receive the second set of rollers to get deck 2 back in action and enjoy that sweey relay mode.
Is this the same co which made those famous "cobras"? Looks ugly as Hell but a boy must start somewhere before climbing onto RX-7200... I am still climbing...
Sweet jesus that 7200 is straight up pornography. And yes Panasonic made those cobra units that look horrible.
Good luck with all your future BBX endeavours, mate! Speaking about the best Panasonic one-piecers from 90s (Cobras) I may advise you to have a look at their 2 top-tier models - RX-DT707 (909) and 75(95), 909 and 95 are the JDM models only. RX-DT909 - this one I used to have:
Well, until maybe 2-3 years ago they had been at least 2 Double Tape Panasonic models available new in Dubai: Panasonic RX-CT600/650
I know I have posted this before but Derb might not have seen it. Something for the "modern" Panasonic fan to aspire to. I remember a friends Nephew getting a Panasonic Cobra for Christmas back in about 1996, so even these must be about 20 years old. Mystic Traveller. Here in the UK the 707 and 77 were the most common. http://www.hifi-review.com/150631-panasonic-rx-ed77.html
Cobra-top is definitely on my shopping list of one to own, I've always liked the way they look but just that little bit too expensive to buy back in the day.
