Sony CFT 22

I've made a video about a portable cassette radio by Sony. Thanks to this community for all the information and good talks.

 

Hi, Manuel. Thanks for sharing this video. Can’t say that a Sony CFT-22 is a must-have item for me, with its whitish “semi-cylinder” layout. (Shrug) But, ah, the way they dressed in those days: the ladies looking coiffed and fetching, right down to their pumps, even when busy in a hot kitchen (but never mind the lasses in the two-piece outfits ).


Uh, weren’t companies in Germany – that is, Cold War West Germany – making their own transistor radios and the like? At the risk of showing bigotry (uh-oh), it’s kind of displeasing to hear that actual manufacturing of even relatively basic sound systems was done in Asian factories, even as far back as 1974. Or was it too costly for the German catalog retailer Quelle to manufacture in its homeland?

Pity I couldn’t view the YouTube video fully. At a certain point, the darn video “froze” while the audio carried on. Ah, this aging laptop, with its fewer and slower processors, has baffled my YouTubing again. (Sigh …)

 

Thank you Mister X! Means a lot coming from you. And yes, Sony had some really unique tabletop models which can be find in good conditions here in Germany.
Please, would love to hear some of your video ideas. You know, outside of these forums, it's hard to find folks who understand our passion for old gadgets.

Easthelp, thank your for your message. Made me chuckle more than once Regarding the manufacturing process in West Germany, you're spot on with your assumption at the end of the paragraph. At that time, and for the information I've gathered online, there was just no way to beat the prices of some Asian countries. They even imported products from the GDR (East Germany) cause they had way lower wages than West Germany.
My next video is going to be about a GDR product and will also explore these topics, so hopefully you can get that laptop working cause I have some really beautiful old footage.

 

Hey Manuel, nice vid. That radio looks interesting for the kitchen.

 

A nice video with plenty of background information and clips.
Regarding the waterproofing it is unlikely that the radio will get that wet but Kitchen radios do tend to get dirty if people are adjusting them at the same time as cooking so the controls are well thought out. After such a long search for your perfect kitchen radio I hope they don't turn off Analogue (FM) Radio in Germany in the same way they already have in Norway.

Regarding the age, I was curious and found a service manual online

https://servlib.com/sony/audio/cft-22.html?start=15

The last page is copyright 1996 which seems quite believable for a unit with a full logic cassette deck but no DAB reception.

The forthcoming East German video sounds interesting. I have commented before how we used to get all sorts of imports from the Eastern Block. From East Germany Praktica SLR cameras and Binoculars had a reputation for being good value, and having good lenses. Looking at the cameras in the 1983 Shoppers World Catalogue a Praktica was the star item and the only SLR available, costing not much more than a Japanese point and shoot.



Of course the reason they were such good value was that the East German Government was setting the exchange rate. Once the wall came down in 1989 they couldn't really compete in the open market.

Finally for anyone with 20 minutes to spare this is an interesting video

 

Thank you TooCool4!

Sorry for the late response Longman. I'm still not used to the notification system on the forum.

I've watched the video and I loved it. Really interesting and very well done. It opens another door for research and content creation. Thank you for the tip

As for the FM bands in Germany, they are still really strong. It will take generations to switch to digital. In that matter, scandinavian countries seem way less pragmatic than the germans. You'll be surprised that in Berlin most of bars and restaurants still don't accept cards. It's a cash based city where most of the communication with governmental offices, banks and health insurance providers, is still done by Mail. If they unplug FM radios as fast as they did in Norway, people will most likely take the streets. Or maybe that's just me daydreaming...

Funny that you mention Praktica cameras cause I've been recently very interested in all stuff from the GDR(EN)/DDR (DE). I don't wanna plug myself that hard but I did mention the good old SLR Prakticas in a video about a Cassette Storage called Kassetten Karussell here in Deutschland. Such a rich and dark part of history.

 

why do they say those carousels are east-german ? they we're a usual cassette-storage in my youth, i remember having them in orange, blue, black, yellow, red and green (gave the last one - orange - away a few days ago to a friends son, containing 20 pre-recorded cassettes with "knight-rider" audiobooks...).
they were all made in western germany, not eastern...

 

Hey there autoreverser. I've done an extended research into the item before posting my video. The specific Scona Variant Kassetten Karussell was made in East Germany, in Halle to be more precise. The plastic parts were produced in the Halle Ammendorfer Plastwerk plant and the individual parts were assembled by blind workers at the today known Berufsförderungswerk Halle (Saale) gGmbH. They were sold all over Germany that's why they were also found in the West.

This item is also part of the collection at the DDR (GDR/East Germany) Museum in Berlin. https://www.ddr-museum.de/en/objects/1015129

When you said they were all made in West Germany, where do you base your information from?

Regards