Portable Cassette Newspaper Ads!

A good selection of Audio gear from Curry's in 1991

 

An Advert with loads of prices from today in 1990.



I have commented before that the British hate haggling. However many will happily drive across town to save £10 if they see a bargain price on an advert like this.

Thinking back to just a couple of years before this the Carrefour Hypermarket (which happened to be my nearest shop) had an offer where you got a free gallon of petrol (gas) if you spent £30 there. That was great when I was the buyer for the departments unofficial tuck shop.

 

This 1989 Tandy (AKA Radio Shack in the USA) covers many topics on Stereo2Go.


p.s. That Cassette Deck looks interesting. I wonder if it uses Portastudio type heads to copy both sides of a tape at once.

 

I think a lot of the time the smaller companies were less worried about lawsuits.

Sony or Panasonic "The record companies won't like that idea"
No name manufacturer "Customers will love this idea"

It explains why the likes of Sony never made one of these;



More recently, with DVD players it seemed that the cheaper they were the more facilities they had, particularly when it came to changing regions, playing DivX discs etc.

 

Today in 1993 was a Saturday and U.K. rivals Comet and Dixons were obviously trying to compete for peoples Christmas present money with double page adverts from both of them. Loads of VCRs and TVs which I aren't going to post, but not a washing machine in sight.

Comet

Dixons



Interestingly DCC is getting some promotion

Meanwhile, the newspaper had an offer for a TV Themes cassette or CD which included a draw to win a DCC player

 

Yet another Dixon's advert but today from 1989. Saisho was their own brand only sold in their shops.
I'm sure there would have been AKAs in other markets. No wonder the Hitachi 3D30 was the weakest of the range.
It didn't cost much more than a normal Boombox. I have had both that and the Sony and sold them both since they were nothing special

 

I don't think Dixons were ever into such things. They were into having a shop in every town as the go to place to buy Cameras, Calculators, and Audio stuff.
Think of a Radio Shack branch but with Cameras instead of Components.
I have commented before that I have yet to even see a Sharp GF777 or a JVC M90 in person.
In the U.K. you would have probably had to have gone to London to buy one.

In 1989 a statement model would have definitely included a CD player.
I looked in the 1989 Argos catalogue and these were their most expensive models.

Expensive, although I suspect what you got was a £100 CD player with a cheap Boombox attached as the bottom of the same page in the catalogue illustrates

 

@Radio Raheem has probably had them all. https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/my-thoughts-about-boomboxes.142/page-2
My guess would be either a Panasonic or a JVC.
I was impressed enough by the Panasonic RX-E300 to buy one when I saw it reduced to £240 in a sale.
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/panasonic_radio_recorder_rx_e_300.html
With Dolby on its full logic deck and a comprehensive remote, the only thing it is really missing is a line input.
However, I suspect the top of the range boxes were reserved for the JDM, and the styling of any of them (except the JVC Kabooms) reminds me of the joke in The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy about "Black Buttons on a black control panel". By then boxes (and HiFi) had caught up with the 80s craze for "Black Ash" furniture.

p.s. I guess high end products just don't get advertised in tabloid newspapers. The car advertisements that keep appearing the most are for Proton which were a budget brand competing against Daewoo, both of whom disappeared as quickly as they appeared with huge advertising budgets and plans to undercut the likes of Ford and GM.

 

the high end back then was the panasonic dt 707 ed90 dt 75



in japan you had the panasonic dt 909 dt9. yes eggs lol

3 piece dt 680 dt 690 all of which i had back in the day apart from the japan ones
lower end panasonic e250 e300 anything lower than that i didn't bother with them

the dt680 690 were part of the platinum range....had them all the best part they all sounded the same with the same output 80w pmpo with less features as you went down the range
interesting to note the dt 707 is posted further up this thread by longman cost 350 that is what i paid....i always thought i paid to much as the shop was not cheap but apparently not cheers longman the dt680 was also 350 new with the rest of the range costing less as you stepped down the range

japan always had better than we did lads for whatever reason only known to them....there were plenty more high end from different brands as we know but they were sold mainly in japan lads

after this i really dont know as i gave up with boxes until the kaboom came out in 1999 2000 then in 2003 i joined he flipping forum and it all started again lol

 

I wonder if Japan's famously small apartments meant there was more of a demand for portable systems ?
I just looked in the 1993 Argos catalogue to see what you could buy stereo wise for the price of a a DT707 and found this for just £20 more>
It might be just the same parts stuffed into a different form factor but there was obviously a bigger demand for such systems with the most expensive being a Sony for £450

 

It must almost be Christmas. In 1990 Dixons had a full page advert for Britain's Biggest Range of Personal Hi-Fi.
I don't think they were exaggerating, although you would probably have had to go to a Sony centre to buy a Discman.

 

1989 and Curry's think you need a CD Boombox.
They were certainly dropping in price. At the start of the year the Philips was £199.
I actually considered getting one back then.

 

i have the panasonic fd 80 much better than that phillips imho