Panasonic RX-ST7-K

I am always on the hunt for boxed boomboxes and ones that are uncommon, and I got a rare one added to the collection today. This is a 1994 Panasonic RX-ST7 Boombox. I bought it new and imported it from Japan unopened. I love Panasonic's 90s audio stuff, and this box easily lives up to the quality of an RX-DT680. To speak to the evidence of that, this unit works perfectly fine straight out of storage since mid 1994, all belts are good, all functions tested with not even a hint of a problem. Tape has no wow/flutter issues or pitch problems from worn out belts. Since there is little to no information on this thing at all on the web, I'll talk through what I've learned. Here are some pics of it in box:




You can see it neatly packed up in its box... this was taken after I tested it and placed it back in storage. We have the boombox, papers, cords, remote, and remote batteries all in their sealed bags. There's even an OG price card... 47,800yen... that's $345 in today's US currency. Obviously, this thing is straight up weird looking, and I have to say, it's pretty ugly... the first thing to notice about it is the shape. It looks really tall and thin:



The tall shape allows it to accommodate 4 speakers and really decent bass porting in a compact size, and it also allows a lot of buttons/compartments to be added going top to bottom on the face. It's also very heavy, weighing substantially more than you'd ever think given it's size. Adding to the weirdness, the two cassette compartments are placed one on top, one on the front, and the CD mechanism uses a tray with a illuminated window:



Now, let's talk about quality... the level of luxury and quality put into this machine is crazy. It screams high-end to me. BOTH cassette drives have Video-8 camcorder style motorized eject lids and trays... so the cassette door opens and then a tray extends outward all automatically. The cassette compartment is also made with very high-quality parts:



Also, the machine's CD compartment uses special dampaning techniques to isolate it, and it looks more akin to something you'd see in a compact CD player for a home audio setup. Oodles of high-quality materials again.



But the display is also a really high-end. It is a backlit display that has enough characters to show everything happening with the device at ones, it is animated, and it even has a text capable area for cataloging custom CD memos. You can also use the display to cycle through EQ settings and also the spacial audio features. The front panel also has a ton of buttons and dials for adjusting record settings, editing tapes, selecting decks, and enabling audio features. The button placement is really odd however, and it confuses me to have tape play and stop under the display, but place the FF/REW controls on the deck lid...

This unit also has karaoke support, with 2 mic jacks, and mixing dials for sing-along. It also supports CD+G as well stated on the manual:



Finally, the radio... the radio supports AM Stereo/FM stereo and digital tuning with presets. Reception is really quite good.

But, how does it all sound?



I think this deck sounds excellent. I was blown away at now natural and 'big' the EQ was, and how versatile the settings were for sound preset. It is a unit that I would definitely listen to a lot, and the combination of good bass and treble that didn't disappoint made it sound great to me. With 25W output, it's not going to sound puny at all...

But there are some negatives to this box... first off, you cannot operate it with battery. It does have a battery compartment for AAs, but those are for saving user-data in a power loss. Next, it looks ugly to me, not the kind of device you'd enjoy looking at whilst enjoying choons. Finally, using it is complicated. I am 23, and not ignorant of tech at all, but finding simple functions like fast forward and play for CD took longer than I expected. You also have to select tape decks manually if you have a tape in both, similar to the DT680.

Overall, super impressed, am glad to have this one in the collection.