Hello! New user here and excited to join the community. I'm a long time fan of portable cassette players and recorders and recently went down a rabbit hole of trying to find any potential lists of all National / Panasonic portable cassette players and recorders. Wondering if anyone knows of any such thing. or if there is even any partial list out there somewhere? I'm for some reason a little obsessed with the Panasonic line of cassette players and recorders, and having a hard time finding any kind of comprehensive list to research. My personal favs over the years that I used a lot were the larger Slimline IV model with the large built in speaker, the kind of elegant RQ-2720 I found somewhere at a thrift store, the RQ-J6 and RQ-J11 (some reason loved that vinyl case!), many others, but there is this other model that stopped working years ago that I absolutely loved and cannot for the life of me find anywhere, which is why I started down this rabbit hole here with Panasonic. I started in with the Sears Wishbook site per year, which is an absolute trip to go through if you lived through any of those years, but it's kind of hard to navigate and a LOT of the content in there has no reference to a model number or make even, plus the scanned photos are pretty crappy. Anyways sorry if this already exists on the forum, I did do several searches using many terms but couldn't seem to find any lists. Appreciate if anyone has any links to anything. Thanks.
Note: I did come across these two sites which had a nice collection of information: http://www.audioreview.com/brand/portables/cassette-players/panasonic.html http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/walkman/panasonic/ However checking online on ebay and other sites I'm seeing a ton of other models out there that aren't listed on those sites. Kind of hoping there is another kindred spirit out there who was obsessed with this and decided to make a geocities page or something that still exists? Wishful thinking probably!
There are just over 10000 Panasonic models listed on RadioMuseum, although obviously that includes plain radios https://www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_search.cfm Another idea would be to look at one of the sites listing service manuals. I wonder if Panasonic themselves know, as different models were made by different sub=divisions. I have a National Panasonic radio made in Iran !
Nice, thanks for the replies! @Longman thank you for the link. Checking here: https://www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_search.cfm - I do see a ton of Panasonic listed. If I check the list for some of the common handheld portable cassette players in the 'RQ' line it doesn't appear to list very many of them. Missing a lot of lines like RQ-330, RQ-341, RQ-346, later versions like RQ-SXV1, RQ-S50 and SX50V, RQ-SX7, RQ-SX95 and 95F, the shockwave series like RQ-SW10, RQ-SW20, RQ-V201, the voice activated lines like RQ-L30 and others, the XBS line, RQ-NX etc. @Reli thanks - this link is cool - http://wikiboombox.com/tiki-index.php?page=Panasonic - it looks to be mostly boomboxes and not as much on the portable handheld players/recorders though. That's a good idea about reaching out to Panasonic directly. I wonder if they might have some list like this. Were there any other major electronics catalogs that would feature the best of from each manufacturer each year that anyone knows of?
Good luck, there may have been thousands of different portables, and I'm not including the boomboxes. I don't think I've seen an all inclusive list of Panasonics, The Lion has a great site with AIWAs and there used to be a two sites with Walkmans. I'll tell you my super secret ways for finding information, hopefully this helps. 1. Search on Yahoo.jp, type in something like "Panasonic RQ" and see what pops up. Using Google Translator helps but sometimes you have issues with the sites from the early 2000's 2. Search the links on my Japanese Website Thread, if they aren't active anymore use Archive.org to look at the old website http://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/another-cool-japanese-website.2030/ 3. Search the old forum for information and links, http://www.stereo2go.com/topic/ or in Google: "Panasonic site:stereo2go.com" The Google Search Engine works the best for searching this site. The forum went through at least four hosting companies over the last 20 years and the last one wouldn't allow the old threads to be incorporated with the new forum (this one). John Edwards only had around 400 portables but his are very memorable, check out his old threads in the forum reader he did several with Panasonics, unfortunately some of photos have disappeared, I think you can use a browser plug-in to get them back. Here's one http://www.stereo2go.com/topic/index.php?content_oid=193392314111869634&board_oid=193392314111653483 4. Request information from the members, they may have PDF brochures from the old days. 5. I always forget this one but it's become a great resource, search Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=panasonic rq&rs=typed I'd probably start a thread with all of the known models listed then other members could chime in other models, the post with the models could be constantly updated. The Pocket Calculator Site is the forerunner to this forum, a lot of us early members found that site first when trying to find information on our latest finds. A forum developed and blossomed into this, some of those early guys were amazing, they could probably list all of them by memory.
RadioMuseum seems to be aimed more at pre 1980s equipment, although as all the data is entered by members more 80s stuff should appear as it becomes considered to be collectable. Regarding service manuals have a look at something like https://www.service-manual.net/?download_category=panasonic-service-manuals of course they want you to buy them Elektrotanya is great for free manuals but you have to know the specific model number you are interested in to get anywhere. If there is any index I don't think you can view it from them web.
