Cosmic Christmas Consumer-2 Stereo, Papua New Guinea POst=Courier, 1978. They really like the Pioneer (Centrex) SK1 but I was intrigued by the "SM 20A" Portable Booster Amp so I did a little research and it's a cool looking portable Amp, just like the description. Attached is a photo from an overseas auction, it ended up selling for around $90 USD.
I just realised that I had never properly looked at the Radio cassettes in a scan of the John Noble 1974 catalogue which I have so here they are. For people who weren't convinced about the new fangled cassettes of their sound quality there were some interesting alternatives As you can see from the prices there were actually three reel to reel recorders available but the Sharp was the most interesting and most expensive. For the car there was a choice of a Radio cassette player at £67 or a Radio 8 Track player at £62 Cassettes seemed to be a reasonable price. I remember my Mother buying that Audio Magnetic brand. Pre-Recorded cassettes less so. They were actually more expensive than the LP. Just remember "Home Taping is Killing Music" so don't be tempted to use your £130 Music Centre so tape your friends albums p.s. For the price of 100 Music Centres you could have bought this Bungalow brand new back in 1974.
I expect they were all AKAs manufactured by some company like Onkyo (a name which I still think sounds silly in English). Interestingly I have a small Tube Table radio with a name like Starbright "made in Japan" in which every single component is Hitachi indicating it was probably made by them. Moving into the 1980s Samsung was a brand you only bought if you couldn't afford something from a brand you had heard of like Hitachi.
We didn't get many Korean Products until the last 20 years or so, Hyundai did get into our market in the late 80's with the ultra-rust buckets. Those things were 10x worse than British Cars for surviving our salted-road winters, maybe three years before they had major rust damage. I have to give it to Hyundai, they didn't quit and now have a large market share over here. Starbright is either a generic name or the same company, I've seen or owned a few small radios from them, great stuff from the 60's when everyone had a transistor radio.
Some history for Rising Audio Systems, they made a few boomboxes but they also had several component tape decks and some other audio products. High Fidelity Possible on Small Budget, 1981, The Straits Times, Singapore.
The beginning of the end? Did the falling demand for high-end boomboxes come first or production movement out of Japan kill the cool boomboxes from the 70's-80's?
I have said this before..the best ones were made in the 90's imho sound quality from the 80's was very hit and miss unfortunately
60,000 views, might be time for a B&B entry, feel free to contribute if you have any information! Business Times (Singapore), 1983, Fall in Exports of Cassette Tape Recorders I think by 1983 everyone had a cassette deck in the car, at home and a Walkman, boombox. VHS players were the new toy along with a 19" TV set. It is interesting how electronics manufacturing is super-price sensitive and always moves to the country with the lowest labor costs.
