Hi, thanks for having me... I am a 'walkman' addict and tho I am def a sony fanboy (i confess!) I collect all brands (to compare to sony?) and I think Aiwa was better than sony for portable tape player sound quality wrt to staging and midbass until around 96 or 97 when they went to the nicd and cheap panasonic style mech I'm not exactly a tape head- i do think tapes sound better for a lot of music (white zombie!) but I'm an engineer and I used to restore cars... I've been collecting portable audio since the mid 90's and I honestly don't know exactly how many units i have or how many work or how many can be salvaged but total i have several hundred tape players, a few hundred md players, and maybe 20-30 cd players. i enjoy restoring tape players now instead of cars, and as an engineer, i like experiencing all the different models and designs because i don't feel like any one tape portable player is the best- to me they are all a collection of compromises- size, sound, battery life, w&f... right now in my collection, my daily drivers are Aiwa px610, 710, 910, pl77, etc... but to me, the best sounding unit in my collection is a red Aiwa J10. i have a lot of experience repairing things, but i am an mechanical engineer, not an electrical engineer, so i am very much still learning about circuits wrt how they operate.
Welcome to Stereo2go 944 Dream I agree with you Aiwa made some very nice unit, I owned a lot back in the day. I own a PL77 too, but it got stolen. I really like the thin size of the PL77, but it was average sounding. I currently own a PL777 for nostalgic reason. Oh, by the way you are, a hoarder .
I'll have mine corralled in these containers This is the one I use on a regular basis when I do play a cassette in a Walkman It's a gx670
Welcome! Wow, hundreds of everything, sounds awesome. Personally I've been picking for over 25 years grabbing stuff that was supposedly never coming back but were unobtanium as a kid. Mostly audio but some cars, tools and toys also found a new home along the way. You'll see some of my threads, I'm into the deep dive of information, I love paging through old magazines checking out ads and reviews. Even the old ads are cooler looking then the slick monstrosities we have nowadays. We love all photos, post anything.
i was a hoarder, but hoping recent investments in shelves might transform me into a collector i'm not big into boomboxes but i have a couple of little ones nothing special... except for the littlest one i have (in the photo!) here are a couple of my favorites for various reasons on the shelf, and a bunch of weird/new/rare/sweet colorways on the table. idk why i can't paste the photo inline.. @Cassette2go @Mister X I think i've learned a lot lurking around here from you guys... @Cassette2go I have never seen the gx670, only the gx677 which i think is identical? I have a few of them, one nib bc I love all of the units that have menus on them (or controls on the body for everything) and when i find one i like i just buy a dozen. I read that the track gaps in the heads are sub-optimal for sound in the portable recorders... i don't know if this is true but one of my daily drivers is this blue fx877 which is basically the same unit but no record function bc of this and I love the not black or silver colorways I think the sq difference in the heads is why the radio recorder is a '6' and the radio player is an '8' model line if there is one, but i would be lying if i said i could hear it. i do think the 877 groove is way too much bass while the 677 groove is just kinda too much bass.
Welcome to the forum, @944 Dream ! You seem to be a serious collector having some very nice walkmans like: National RQ-J9, Pioneer PK-R7AW, Sharp Piu, Toshiba KT-AS10, Hitachi CP-S3G, AIWA HS-JX3000, SONY WM-W800, WM10RV and even a SONY MZ-RH1. Despite you're a SONY fanboy, you do seem interested in many other manufacturers. There's always nice to see some variation, especially the not so common brands such as Pioneer. Am curious about the Alpine unit, which looks very similar to a Toshiba KT-AS1. What model is that ? I enjoy restoring walkmans myself and also collect them. Looking forward to see more of your collection.
Alpine, Lo-D, some really neat stuff. The forum has gone through a lot of hosting changes since 2002 and we've lost a ton of information and older members that really knew everything. There used to be a member "TPR" that seemed to know every boombox made, ARKAY (Hong Kong) found every grail boombox/walkman/audio made at used audio stores and many, many more. If you look at the top theres an "Old_forum" button, some of the last forum are found there but a ton of photos and threads are long gone. In the early days I used to troll downstairs with the Walkman Threads but once you start finding killer boomboxes, it's hard not to get sucked into those as well. Right now my daily driver is a Pioneer SK-61, I listen to the radio while doing my desk work and the Pioneer delivers nice non-fatigue sonics.
Ahh yes Tpr sounds familiar! I have to use headphones at work so a boom box is out of the question but I do have a few interesting units, including one with cassette and 8-track... I think it's a Hitachi. I will check after work if that alpine tape unit actually has a model number- I think it's just designated the ceremo35. I have not yet checked the board to see if it is different from the Toshiba esp wrt audio path, and it's going to be awhile before I can do side by side tests, but this is what I have found so far and it may be wrong. Alps Alpine commissioned special edition portable players for their 35 (tape) and 50th (md) anniversaries. I have never seen any others out in the wild, if I did I would have bought them. The ceremo50 is made by sharp and iirc only the box and a unit flair deco sticker mention Alps Alpine. I've been told that these would have been gifts to their best selling Japanese retailers who may have sold them, raffled them, or kept them for personal use - whatever they wanted basically. I would love to find out more information and if there's another (ceremo40 maybe? Cd maybe?)
Also fwiw that's one of the worst sellers I've ever encountered. Very shoddy repair on a px910. Missing caps. Worked. Sounded terrible.
