Hello everyone, I found a nice cassette player branded IRRADIO and model Tripper 9 in a flea market, but I can't find any news about it and not even another one like it. It looks like a unique piece! So I thought I'd post some pictures of this device, with the hope of finding news or that someone recognizes the same mechanics from another brand. It is possible that it is a proprietary mechanic of IRRADIO or even that it is a mechanic of another manufacturer. I was able to notice that the mechanics are of a very good quality level (in my opinion) and that the audio is true stereo and have a good quality level. This cassette player also has the ability to host an AM / FM tuner pack (as well as some TOSHIBA, KLH SOLO S100, PANAVOX MS-730TR and some more). Thanks
Great find Antony3000! It's more of a Unitech, they have the same logo on the back, the top "U" and the bottom "T." Mine is a little different with a built in radio/antenna and two built in speakers on the back making it one of the smallest boomboxes. Your model is a new find, I don't think it's been posted before. Even though they are Korean and kind of rare, they're really beefy, very good looking plus they're pretty heavy.
Thanks for replies, Yes, with the tuner pack inserted and without the case the weight is 385 gr. Irradio is a historic Italian brand born in 1931 and closed in 1970. So this cassette player is from before 1970.
Am/FM Stereo Radio Module (Tuner AM/FM pack), complete with AM/FM selector and Stereo signaling LED Auto-Reverse automatic and manual selectable. Tape type selector ( Normal or Metal / CrO2 ). Anti-rolling mechanism. It can't be before the 80s.... For sure and a Clone I would say around 1983---1984......The shape of the keys also speaks clearly
Yes Silver, it seems the same building style and the same designing mind of Aiwa HS-P02! Also the keys are the same design. The key of autoreverse is the same. I add some other photo of keys of Irradio... Do you think that the "Original" is the Aiwa or the Irradio? Of course I'm joking.
If Irradio is a brand people remembered in Italy then it has a value and other companies will pay to use the name, For a similar example in the UK check out the history of Bush radio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_(brand)#Use_of_brand_since_the_1980s On the Wikipedia page there is a link to a good article about Badge engineering https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/art...adge-front-who-really-made-your-tv-set-869393
Yes Longman, each country has its historical brands and all (with few exceptions) share very similar stories like that of Bush Radio. Birth (years 30-50), growth (years 40-60), crisis (years 70-80) sale (years 80-2020). Now (with some exceptions) everything is made in China. Personally, I'm not happy ....
That is because people aren't prepared to pay "Made in Italy" or "Made in Japan" prices. Lets have a look at a few UK prices in 1988 (the year you were born ?) Prices were already starting to drop compared with ten years earlier. Being obsessed with prices I often refer to the Bank of England Inflation calculator. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator According to that we need to multiply by 2.7 to get 2019 prices. So the Sharp Radio Cassette at the bottom of the page which I think is the same one @Jorge bought recently cost the equivalent of £216 new. I included the TVs because the Fidelity ones at the top were made in the U.K. It was still viable to do so when you could sell a 14" TV for the 2019 equivalent of £400. The market was probably still booming with people wanting one to connect to their home computer. p.s I was rather surprised to see a slide projector on one of the earlier pages (at £80) but I suppose that was Multimedia back in 1988.
I also have another "Walkman" of which I have no news and it looks like a one-off. I add some photos in the hope that someone will recognize him ... ONCEAS WM 3211 . Onceas is also a historic Italian brand.
Nice! That's a neat little player, from my research you guys must have had more open trade with Korea than we did since they never turned up over here. I've gone through a bunch of Italian Magazines online and they sold a bunch of equipment to you. The FF/CUE switch is kind of unique, you don't seem many toggle switches on portables.
If you are looking for Irradio on ebay you will find everything ... from Mp3 to valve or digital terrestrial radio... I don't know how much italian left from the 70s onwards maybe still in the 80s it was a Made in Italy product ... Now I think it's all made in China.. India... and only the name has remained changing over time the brand.......This onceas is recognized that it was marketed in Italy by the sticker placed on the back of the state monopoly with the serial number
Surely all the good that the old brands have done is all before 1980. That's why all of us and collectors are looking for these old objects from the past. I also know that the products that are found today (even if they belong to past brands) have nothing in common with the old ones.
I think that Recaptcha with his 1987 Apple CD ROM would disagree with that. I also suspect that in forty years time someone will be writing about the vintage Sony Playstation5 they found somewhere. What is true is that European politicians have dismissed manufacturing as a Twentieth Century activity, thinking they will let the Chinese do it all. Browsing Ebay recently I was surprised to see where this sixteen year old DVD recorder was assembled That was almost certainly due to a combination of subsidies and import duties. At least you can buy a mainstream car from an Italian owned manufacturer (Fiat). In Britain the largest British owned manufacturer Aston Martin makes just 6000 a year
Finding a PIONEER Mounted in the UK ... for sure some trade deal has been done ... the Fiat group and Returned to Turin now with the new electric 500... to relocate several cars in past years ... But returning to Our Clone Irradio ... Here I found more https://www.ebay.it/itm/UNIVERSUM-W...688219?hash=item2d1c525d5b:g:~9cAAOSwJZ5frl3O And at the bottom of this page there's another one from Siemens https://www.tapeheads.net/showthread.php?t=2072 at this point I can't say ... who to copied who
I noticed that the Universum CPR 4035 A also has the same Unitech Logo as the Irradio. Now I know that my Tripper 9 has siblings ... with different brands. Knowing and saying .... who has copied who is almost practically impossible, but surely it can be said that fans of this kind of vintage, in Stereo2go almost always find the help and answers they are looking for. Thanks to all.
Doing a little digging, I found the Unitech Website. There's a lot of Unitechs out there but this has the same name design. Notice that they spell the name different for the website. https://web.archive.org/web/20040206202235/http://www.unitec.co.kr/ I can't get it to translate but it looks like they were big into computer electronics in the mid-2000s.
