For the general public there was an emphasis on "Sound Photographs". My Aunt who was a headmistress took her Reel to Reel to London Zoo to record the Real Penguins, Sea Lions etc. I don't know if that was for use in school, her own amusement, or both, I very quickly modified my radio so the speaker didn't cut out when the earphone socket was used made a lead so I could connect that to the input of my cassette recorder. You are bringing back memories here. I marked the radio volume control with the optimum level for recording. No possibility of that with my parents record player though which didn't have any sockets and was probably live chassis. I just had to hope that the noisy diesel engined milk lorry didn't drive past on its way to the Dairy up the road. Something else I have thought about this is what the comparative costs of blank tapes and LPs was. No point in recording something if it is cheaper to buy an LP than a blank tape. I do recall my Father trying to record the "Farewell to the Seekers" concert using his Grundig DC cassette recorder microphone in front of the TV. Nowaday's you can watch it for free on Youtube.
In this region (Netherlands), radio became very popular when the radio pirates came into being. On these stations, the hip music that the youth liked was played. And many parents thought it was bad music. The first radio station started around 1960 from the sea over here. On AM, outside territorial waters. The large amount of radio pirates came to an end around 1990. Interestingly enough, this was the same time that the boombox's popularity began to decline. The heyday of pirate radio was around 1980 over here, on FM. I remember this time well, because it was also the time that I was fanatically recording from the radio. And most of the time from illegal radio stations from here in the city. Probably not coincidentally, this time coincided with the peak of the radio-cassette recorder hype. Anyway, I think there might be a connection between the existence of pirate radio stations and the usefulness of radio recorders. At least over here.
Pirate Radio, cool movie! I just find it strange that even the cheap Hong Kong small R2R's didn't have a radio and they put every gadget know together. Most early radio cassette-corder ads mentioned the ability to record off the radio.
That 1962 ad for the Sony TC-103 was in a religious magazine (De katholieke illustratie; zondags-lektuur voor het katholieke Nederlandsche volk, jrg 96, 1962, no. 42, 20-10-1962). So my guess is that the only user case they could think of at the time was recording church radio. The marketing of the machines and the price were not aimed at young people at all. The market for this application was probably not large, so not many were made. There was probably simply no need/market for cheap compact radio recording devices seen at the time. It was only when the cheaper and more compact machines (1966+) based on the Compact Cassette came along and the products came within reach of young people in terms of price and compactness that the new use case was found by the buyers and manufacturers. Namely recording fresh-cool-hip-new music from stations that were there yesterday and could be gone the next day. I'm just guessing here a bit from experience while collecting so this is far from a scientific study
Some very early equipment from Philips 1967, it's nice seeing it with actual pre-recorded cassettes, I'm sure that was a huge help with sales.
Whew! I have never seen such a combo of namely reel-2-reel and radio, never ever gave it a thought that such might have existed! Thank you! The only Big combo I have seen pics of was all-in-one - a turntable, R2R and radio with separate speakers, IIRC. A big stationary piece..
somewhere in the deep of my boxes i found a whole pile of "Funkschau" mgazines for consumer electronics, made for pro's. there's so many old adds and reports, i could scan for ages - especially those small adds in the back of those mags, with units/companies, that i've never even knew they existed...
Most Funkschau Issues are on archive.org, I've been mining them for awhile. While I don't read them, the photos and ads are great.
Your welcome MT There is more imho. It is about the local rise of UK and US pop music, the musical freedom, the top 40 radio format for example and the social change through music that took place. In essence one may say that the radio cassette recorder along with pirate radio played a huge role in popularizing modern pop music and gave the possibility for the innovative creative freedom and expression of that time and after. I would not find it strange that this kind of mechanism occurred in many more countries at different times through boomboxes. From this perspective, the ability to capture is the essential feature of a boombox. In which the cassette is like the canvas of a painting It also gave a huge boost to the electronics and music industry of course. Who made the transmitter components. Who made the components for the tracking equipment for the illegal transmitters. Who made the millions of receivers and recorders and who owned the record labels, etc, etc.... How I come to this story; I always tend to pick up my boomboxes personally if possible and then always ask about the origin, the original owner and the reason why they had it and what they did with it. Very informative conversations that sometimes last for hours
I never heard pirate radio as a kid, I think the FCC would have come in with guns blazing. We did have college radio and I was lucky to have one of the only high school stations near me back then. Both would play just about anything and it bookended corporate radio perfectly. We also had some cool late night shows with programs like "Z-Rock" blasting newly found metal bands like Metallica. All of them were trying to outdo each other finding new and breaking trends. Now when I listen to the radio, they're playing the same top 40 I heard 40 years ago, unfortunately the "better" deep cuts never get played. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Rock
I recently picked up this Crowncorder CRC-410SW which seems to be the follow-up to Japan's First Boombox, the Crown CRC-9100F (allegedly). It looks like they updated the transport to the typical piano keys we learned to love and they added FM to the radio bands. Radio Museum lists it around 1972 but I think it's more like 1969, but information is very hard to find. This one has the killer antenna set up I like, it folds horizontal and slides into the body of the recorder, I would have loved this feature on some of the larger two-antenna models, it would have looked so nice. This little guy has no lights so even though it works, there's nothing to show. How cool would it look with a nice glowing LED display? Feature rich, this has a "MON" button (Monitor), EAR, AUX, REM and MIC all are 1/8" jacks. I guess the monitor would work with AUX? As of now, I think this is my oldest Radio-Cassette but I have another one coming soon! Yea, just picked up some classic songs from the greatest 80's teen-angst melodrama, 90210.
Wow, great find! 3 Band Constellation! How does it sound, they knew how to pick up sonorous epithets!
Super nice find! A fascinating machine! Such an important step in boombox development. It exudes real quality with all the chrome details. I wonder what else is on the way. Will it be the mysterious CRC-9100F?
The radio works but scratchy as expected, I didn't do too much playing with it as I want to put together a dim bulb tester to warm up my old audio equipment.
From our friend ab388, I don't think I posted this ad from 1969 with the CSC-9350M, maybe the first "monster" boombox?
