I was cruizing ads today and found this clip from a 1984 Playboy Magazine for the Sony WA-200, I love the "WA" Series and have several of them but I don't think I have ever seen this model before. Did it go into production, are there any catalog pages for it? A google, yahoo.jp and ebay comes up with nothing. Personally I love this style of small recording cassette with radio and antenna.
I have one that looks exactly the same, but with a different model number: The Sony WA-77 A quick google search for the WA-77 only returns these color combination, but mine has the same gold & silver color as the one above for the tuning dial.
A calalogue page here http://www.stereo2go.com/topic/index.php?content_oid=257149839360300472&board_oid=193392314111653439 Interesting that they call it a "Soundabout" rather than a Walkman. I suspect that many Sonys had different model numbers in different regions. You can buy a service manual for the WA200 if you want. https://www.manuals-in-pdf.com/download-WA200-SONY-p-503458.html I doubt if they would have gone to the trouble of publishing a service manual for a device they never made.
Thanks! Great information! Like I've said, sometimes I'm covering covered ground, even AO didn't know about it which is amazing, he had more grails under his bed then most of us will see in a lifetime on the internet. The Soundabout Branding seems to be on the bigger, clunky versions, I think they wanted Walkman to apply to the latest and greatest (and small). The WA-77 might have a feature like FM broadcasting that they couldn't sell in North America so they rebranded it. It's too bad the forum host and information wasn't able to stay together for the last 20 years, whatever happened to retrodos? A few years ago I was on a mission to get the clunky Soundabout Units, I have several but more keep popping up in some of the old ads I'm digging up.
I finally bought one!!!! She's a little beat on but these are ultra-rare and I love the Sony WA Brick Series. This is like the forgotten member. I took a few photos, the FM stereo light is flickering, unfortunately this one looked the best and it doesn't have the light on but the radio does work. I'll put her next to the big brothers of the awesome WA Series on my shelves.
So I also found a listing for the repair manual, it confirms what Stuck In Time says about the WA-77, this uses the same transport and is probably mostly the same except for some USA Modifications. Obviously aimed at women, the colors are beautiful and the smaller square buttons and tiny FWD/BWD lighted chrome buttons make it look like the expensive model it was.
It looks great, let’s see if I can find decent pictures to feature it on Walkman.land! -- Update: we decided to add information to the WA-77 page rather than adding a new model. We link to this thread for users to read why, see the link below the description. When more info becomes available, I can always split the 2.
I love the needle in the haystack models, there's nothing really special about it but at the same time it's great looking in different colors. The build quality is very nice. I feel like the Japanese Kids knew all about these types of players and it was a game to own one and you got props if you had one.
