It looks the same as it is about to receive @autoreverser ...yay, on it's way to me ! | Stereo2Go forums
Sperimentare Magazine 1972, Sony was a big advertising in this magazine so you'll see mostly their equipment. Even though I can't read it, this is a fun magazine to look through and this issue is really good with a ton of equipment previewed. https://archive.org/details/Sperimentare_1972_12_supplemento/mode/2up
Some more from 1978, the Philips AR 166, The GBC L500 and the GBC L550, I'm not sure if these are ads or new products?
@Mister X Continuing on the Italian magazines you will eventually learn to read it ... thanks for the link @Mister X Continuando sulle riviste italiane alla fine imparerai a leggerlo ... grazie per il link
Even looking through the magazines, it has some neat photos. I'm a big fan of old mechanic and electronic magazines, I can read Italian and French just enough to get the meaning of the article, some of the technical articles are way over my head.
I note the Sony CF-550 is shown in that 1972 Italian ad posted above. Never seem to have the prices. I am guessing it was around $200-250 US in 1971 when introduced. $1490US according to one inflation calculator I just tried. I snagged a nice one on e-bay last September for $129US with box and styrofoam insert. In fantastic cosmetic condition and fully working. Even came with the old fossilized NiCd battery pack. Overall quality is unbelievable. The joys of old boxes that are not in demand or not considered collectors items The later 1976 CF-580 was $400US as has been discussed enough already. That's $2121US on the inflation calculator site. Extremely expensive for the day. Thanks for your tireless work Mister X. You're keeping this place alive
Thanks Hyperscope! I enjoy digging around the web, 20 years ago this forum was one of the only places to find any info on the old equipment. Personally I only knew of the black and silver mid-level models we had when I grew up and was stunned to see all of the variations available world-wide. I have a feeling the CF-550 went for much more, probably around $500 USD, if not more, when new. I have one of the tiny monos from that time and they left the $300 USD receipt in the leather case. I just looked through some of my newspaper ad postings but couldn't find one with a price but there probably is somewhere. In the old days of the forum there wasn't a ton of love for pre-80's boomboxes, I was (and still am) grabbing all I can find. The old Sony and AIWAs are beasts, some have killer looks. I have a Sharp M9980 doing bathroom duty right now and it just looks tough. Kids today ask why I didn't own more but this equipment was really expensive when I was growing up, I lived on $40 Sanyo Sportsters with an expensive battery habit, there was no way I could afford the nice one.
I had no real interest specifically in old boom boxes / radios until 2014. That's when I was offered 3 boom boxes for free - I chose only one, a Sony CF-160S (S for shortwave and it is a European model). I only wanted that one because it oozed quality, was in pristine condition, plus clearly higher grade than the other two. An old German doctor had passed away a few years prior and his widow was clearing out some of his collection. She gave a lot of stuff to the old German condo manager, who in turn gave it to me, that's when I started thinking of 1970's radios. Did a lot of reading and e-bay looking. But didn't buy anything. I was satisfied with the little mono CF-160S from about 1978. Very sensitive AM and medium wave (short wave) reception with great selectivity. (I was into shortwave since the early 90's anyway so soon realized it beat out my junk Grundig yacht boy 305.) Last year I finally got around to re-capping it with Nichicon FG and ordered a new belt from a Portugal based vendor (belt made in Germany). Sounds great. Interesting side note: The service manual has frequency range on normal type I tape as up to 8000hz only, typical of such boxes of the era. But I wanted to test it and made my own test tape with tones generated in Audacity and recorded on the D6C. And I can hear the tone up to 12 to 13khz with headphones on the CF-160S. I did not test before re-capping, so have no idea if that made a difference, or their specs are just conservative. Some of these old 70's boxes were so expensive it is just unbelievable. Hardly anyone could afford them. In order to be accessible to the masses the manufacturers really had to knock the quality down. As a child in the 1980's I was too young to pick up on much of the boom box thing. Not till 1988 when my Dad got a Sony WM-F73 walkman from someone at work did I know they even existed. The distinct shape of the D-10 Discman seems to be a shadow of a memory to me as I went through an A&B Sound flyer around that time. The price in Canadian dollars was very high, I am guessing $399 to $499, that was intimidating for a kid. My Dad mentioned wanting to get a Discman someday but didn't want to pay that much I never had any interest in getting my own Walkman or Discman till about 6 years later when I was about 14. And my first Discman was a D-141 for $79 (Canadian dollars) from the nearby "Super Pawn". Which was a really cool messy store with concrete floors and stacks of decks on shelves to the ceiling, glass counters stacked high with discmans and walkmans. Before the Internet there was just no way of even knowing which models were any good.I remember the Chinese guy saying "this one sounds better" and trying to get me to buy it... but was too expensive. Can't remember what it even looked like. I need hypnotic regression
That's interesting about the frequency response, that's a pretty big swing. Oak Tree Vintage has been around since the dawn of the internet https://www.oaktreevintage.com/ They post their test specs of equipment for sale and 70's receivers usually are rated 15-25% more watts than the published specs. My neighbor (one of the smartest guys I ever knew) would come home for college (electrical engineering) and tell me about Nakamichi's all day long but they were the most expensive equipment back then and nobody saw one up close. He would also talk up AIWA and said they were much better than Walkmans, he got one in 82 but I can't remember what model it was. Both of those brands have been burned in my memories and I love finding them around town. It sound like the audio bug is hitting you, it's a great hobby especially if you do repairs since a lot of units need work.
