Hi all, I’m trying to identify a personal radio cassette recorder I owned in the early 80s. I bought

Hi all, I’m trying to identify a personal radio cassette recorder I owned in the early 80s. I bought it in winter 1983 at a street market in Vigo, Spain, that sold a lot of grey-import electronics. So it may have been an Asian-market model or a lesser-known brand rather than one of the big names.

What I remember:

• Size: a normal Walkman-sized unit that fitted in a coat pocket
• Colour: silver, possibly with a very faint champagne/gold tint
• Buttons: stop, play, rewind and the others were the same silver colour as the body, not black
• Front: one smoked, slightly translucent dark panel covering the whole front, with the radio frequency scale printed on it
• Tuning: a thumbwheel on the side
• Radio: AM and FM, with no telescopic antenna (the headphone cord worked as the FM antenna)
• Speaker: a built-in speaker on the back
• Recording: it could record from the radio
• Features it didn’t have: no auto-reverse and no equalizer

Already ruled out:

• Sony WA series: telescopic antenna, and the wrong size
• Aiwa CS-J1: FM only
• Sanyo M1770F: close, with a rear speaker and AM/FM recording, but it has black buttons and a telescopic antenna
• Panasonic RX-2700: too big
• Toshiba RT-VS3: no speaker and no recording

Does this ring a bell for anyone? Brand guesses are welcome too: Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba, National, Hitachi, or Hong Kong/Taiwan brands. Thanks!

 

Fact it had no autoreverse means it's likely an early 80s model.
All recorder walkmans that have radio can also record from the radio, so that info alone don't think tells much apart from the fact it's a recorder.

Panasonic had some units similar to the Sanyo M1770F you mentioned, specifically the RQ-339 (although this is a mono unit). There's also the RQ-340 but this one doesn't have a radio.
From this 2, which format it is ? 339 is designed to sit with buttons facing up (more like a boombox, similar to WA series and RX-2700), while the 340 is more like a classical walkman.
Would assume it's more like an RQ-340 since you say speaker on the back.

Do you remember if it was mono or stereo ? Any other details you can remember are helpful.

 

It was a stereo, as it has been many years I think, but I'm not sure, that it had a speaker in the back. What I am clear about is everything else, especially the lid that opened and covered the entire front, there was no room but for a few small edges around. It was more like the RQ-340, I stopped with a dark lid that occupied everything, that one like smoked with letters and decorative stripes.

 

I think the fact door covered the whole front is an important detail to focus on, since this alone limits the number of possible models quite a lot. There aren't many like that.
Also, some brands can be excluded, like JVC for example. JVC/Victor never made a unit to correspond with these criteria. The CX-R7 corresponds to some, but it's much newer (logic control + autoreverse).

The described unit has to be very early 80s, 1984 at most in my opinion. Also I would start with the big names first (SONY, Panasonic, Toshiba, etc.), then with less known ones.
You can use walkman.land for advanced search: https://walkman.land/search/advanced . This way it can be narrowed down very quickly.
Aready, if I choose 1980-1984, radio, recorder, no logic, no bass boost, no remote, no noise reduction, no LCD I'm left with a handful of units none of which have the big door covering whole unit.
The criteria are already very specific and it's possible to be a less known brand.

EDIT: Problem is, if it's a less known brand, will be hard to find it since most sites only focus on the big name brands.
On walkman.land there are less known brands also, but few compared to how many actually existed on the market.

 

Hello, I know it wasn't Sony, I'm sure of that. They were very expensive in Spain at that time, I think it could be either Toshiba, Sanyo or Sharp since they were the cheapest brands of that time. It must also have been a model that did not exist in Spain, in the area where I live there was a well-known market where imported products were sold outside the legal scope, it was located near an important port and they sold liquor, tobacco, clothing and electronic objects outside the official market.

 

The model that most resembles what I remember is Sanyo MR-S7, but it's not exactly the same, I don't remember the black color on the buttons, but the buttons were all the same color, maybe it was a variant of this one, since I don't remember the front speaker either...
It could even be a silver-colored variant of the Sanyo Mini Cassette M1120, but with radio and that records from the radio.

 

My suggestion is to start looking at catalogs of Toshiba, Sanyo and Sharp on walkman.land:
Catalog of sanyo models ▶ Walkman.land
Catalog of toshiba models ▶ Walkman.land
Catalog of sharp models ▶ Walkman.land

The Sanyo MR-S7 does have a telescopic antenna (you said yours didn't) and also the door doesn't cover the whole front.
However it's to be kept in mind Fisher brand also existed and they are essentially Sanyo models with different branding and cases.

Judging by the models I see, Sanyo models seems the closest to your description, but they didn't have many recorders especially in the early 80s.
Something like Toshiba KT-V890 is likely too advanced, as it has autoreverse and 3-band EQ.

My guess so far is the model is more likely to be a Fisher or less known brand especially given you said it was sold outside the official market.
Back then there were also many clones of the big brands, so it could have been one of these, case in which it will be much harder to find the model.