A small blurb from May 1979 Electronics Australia for the AIWA TPR-950, one of the best looking boomboxes of all time.
Panasonic Platinum Ad on the front page of Billboard from 1980. They did a few of these, it had to be one of the most expensive boombox ad campaigns of all time.
One of my favorites, the Sony XF-5000 from 1980, also one of the most expensive boomboxes made, the housing is all metal on both the main unit and the speakers. The boombox also includes a built in rechargeable battery, similar to a motorcyle battery. The pins on the top are for metal braces that hold the while unit together. This is showing a price a little under $1300.00! From Esquire Magazine.
Here is an Ad for the Sony XF-5000 on eBay.there is another one as well and also the original Service manual at a price of £69 ! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SONY-TRA...744754?hash=item1a575b34b2:g:y4oAAOSwDyBbP-B6
There was also a less wattage unit, the XF-3000 that is typically painted white in the series. The market seemed to be places that might see severe duty like buses or boats; the power is 12 volts to make plugging in easy if you don't want to drain the internal battery. From what I can gather the components are based on one of Sony's Automotive Stereos and there's at least one other option, I think it's an EQ, that can be used instead of the tape deck or tuner. I had to buy the service manual, taking apart the unit requires the removal of a lot of screws, some have to be removed from the front but they're in the back of the case so the screwdriver needs to be long and thin. One of the heaviest boomboxes made, pulling out the components requires a soft table and a lot of patience.
I don't think I've posted this yet, the famous Philips CD555 from 1986, Electronics Australia Magazine Review.
I wonder if this was the very first CD Boombox. The article implies it was. Although I was well aware of CDs in 1986 they were the equivalent of today's folding display smartphones, or Electric Sports Cars.
It might have been a Sony, I think I posted one that was from this time, but my guess would be either Sony or Philips. There's a directory in the back of one of these issues and it lists all of the CD releases in Australia, maybe 1000-2000 but not many, mostly classical recordings.
Philips RR260 from 1975, Electronics Australia Magazine Is it just me or isn't the tape deck normally on the left side? This is a very early mono box but it has all of the same design cues everyone was using, rounded-perforated speaker grill, round indents on the body, flat metal bar handle with plastic grabs on the top. Any kid would have loved the military look, kind of the opposite of the bright colored transistor radios that everyone had. The price is Australian Dollars.
JVC introduced Biphonic Boomboxes around 1977, in 1975 Sennheiser was looking into binaural headphones, check out the JVC Ad in this article. The headphones are the type the Astraltune used.
Normally on the left but there were a few Mono's "right-taped" which were a sort of rare. We even had this dedicated thread on ShizAudio - you can see some pics there. http://www.shizaudio.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=12121