Hello, I'm a new forum member, I'm over 50 years old and love vintage radios and boomboxes. There is a proposal to create a section on the forum dedicated to radios. And there is a question: which cassette recorder with radio can be considered a prototype of a boombox? I’ll add that I don’t know English well, so I’m writing using Google translator, there may be mistakes, so don’t scold me too much)
Welcome! Those are great units, the boombox purists are going to say that the Crown is 3 pieces and doesn't qualify. I've got one very similar but the radio is vertical. I don't have the ability to add forums, next time Walkman Archive is on we have to see if he can add a "RADIO" section, I've got a small collection of Zenith Transatlantic and small transistor radios that would fit in nicely.
Good question... some say the Sony CF-550. Maybe. Read this old discussion: What was the first one piece stereo boombox?
Personally I think the first boombox is the Crown SPH-100, but the purist want a cassette deck, so far we've only seen the two Sony's in the above thread but there might be someone smaller we don't know about. https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/the-worlds-oldest-crown-boombox-sph-100.2388/ Here's some of the first one-piecers https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/the-first-radio-corders-1966-1969.9450/ We used to have a group of early forum members that knew the history much more than me, unfortunately we don't see them around anymore.
I don't know anything about first boombox I do know my first radio cassette player that I got before boomboxes were a thing like they are now was a pioneer by Centrex rk-114 that I bought back in 1978 and I don't have the exact same one but I bought one similar to it. That works perfectly, just old. Here's a picture of it in my room right now because I was doing something else with walkmans and I thought I'd just get it down. Take a picture of it let you see it it even has batteries in it still.
