I love vintage audio gear of all kinds. I was born in 1989 so most of the gear that you guys will be familiar with was made long before I was born. Yet my dad instilled a love all things Hi-Fi in me and so I've dabbled with this stuff for years. Unlike some of you, I don't have hundreds of walkmans (although I'd like to), I just try get things I'm going to use on a regular basis and occasionally upgrade them.
Hello and welcome to the forum, @Moon_man157 ! I was also born in the late 80s and the reason I'm interested in this vintage audio devices is because I wasn't really aware that most of them existed at the time, especially the high-end ones (I only had a couple of low-end cheap walkmans back in the 90s). This is why, one of my first purchases in terms of high-end walkmans was the SONY WM-D6C. After owning one for 2 years and repairing lots of other D6Cs, I'm still amazed how capable this unit is and certainly remains one of my top favourites. Like you, I'm intersted in almost all things Hi-Fi, both old and new, but portables remain my favourites: walkmans (including DAT), portable cassette recorders, DAPs and recently Discmans from the 80s.
Welcome to Stereo2go Moon_man157 Like you I don’t own loads of personal stereos, I like to own the best sounding one I can afford and only what I will use.
I have over 100 walkmans and about 300 or so boombox's and I was born in the Fifties and I make video's Of stuff that I repair. https://www.youtube.com/user/Cassette2Go/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/Cassette2Go/videos
That shows the difference between different countries back in the 1980s. Just a short bus ride into town was a Sony centre selling their entire range. However, I don't recall ever buying anything there as the prices were well out of my price range. My first personal stereo was a Sanyo which were typically half the price of Sony. Back in 1989 I moved job and house. One of the reasons was that buying a decent TV seemed out of reach on my then salary. One of the first things I bought once I got a new house was a 25" Toshiba TV for £440 which was nowhere top of the range. If you were on a management salary or liked to max out your credit you would buy a 27" Sony. This catalogue was actually from 1995
I think from launch, Trinitron always was the premier TV when it came to picture brightness and quality. The early sets tended to be quite small though and they were always a premium price. Sony had patents on the design of the tube which only expired shortly before Plasma and LCDs took over. Here is a Technology Connections video about Trinitron
Welcome to the forum if you love art, design, electronics and especially music, the 80's were a wonderful time when they all merged for a brief period in history. I collect because I love the way they put a ton of effort trying to make the little machines not only different but some were on the cutting edge of technology. Luckily for me most people were tossing 70's-80's audio for what they thought was better stuff and I was hoarding a ton of it, saving it from certain doom. If you keep your eyes open you'd be surprised where equipment will show up, pretty soon you'll have more than enough but that won't stop the passion.
...gotta love a Sony Trinitron, the top of the heap for so many years. I bought that model on Sony TV in the early/mid-90s (the 25"). It lasted for ages, working well into the time when everyone had replaced theirs with a widescreen TV - & so many had no idea how to set the picture aspect ratio correctly! We finally replaced it when everyone was throwing out their massive widescreen CRTs in favour of flat-screen TVs. I paid £10 on eBay for a £1000-odd Sony WEGA widescreen CRT that weighed nearly as much me!
