quaz30, your cornering the market, the AIWA HS-M2 is extremely rare, what a great find! Did it come with the even more rare AIWA Metal Microcassette?
Unfortunately not. I had an Aiwa metal microcassette that came along with a red CS-M1, although I sold it along with that boombox. But, this tiny thing came with its own carrying bag, on which its labeled as a "Micro CassetteBoy". It's indeed ridiculously rare, sometimes I wonder if these were even mass produced or did Aiwa just do a small test run of them. I'm very glad I got a chance to grab one, but it has suffered a catastrophic battery leak. The separate motor drive board is completely unusable, there is nearly no copper left on it. I will be etching my own PCB and replacing it entirely. Thankfully, the main board was spared. I have the service manual for this model, something worth noting is that it's quite lo-fi: the frequency response is abysmal, at only 150-6000Hz with normal tape. That's *worse* than the mono National RN-Z500 I have! This is certainly due to very unusual construction - it has no ICs in it. None. The whole thing is driven by 23 transistors. The PCB has a very odd design as well. Overall, this model looks more like a prototype than anything, tech wise.
Thanks, that's interesting, it has so little information, maybe AIWA rushed production to have something at the consumer electronics shows. It makes me wonder who had the best system, Sanyo (Fisher), JVC and Sony seem like the big three. I think Technics and JVC had the only real component decks, the others looked like something an executive would have on their desk. For the future of cassettes, it sure fizzled fast.
Indeed, it's a shame it never caught on but then again no one really tried to make a great machine. About the decks, I think Technics never sold their decks - I have never seen any pictures of them, only magazine cutouts. JVC D-M3 seems like the best option performance/rarity wise. But the holy grail is the mighty Hitachi L-oD MC50. I have seen 2 of them go on sale in the last 2 years. It was a Japan only model with the best specs microcassette ever achieved. It has Dolby B and even C and everything you could ever want.
I'd get this but it's just a hair out of my price range, super cool though if you love the Sony M-1000 Stereo Microcassette Player. https://www.ebay.com/itm/ORIGINAL-S...TE-CORDER-PRODUCT-BROCHURE-D1156/202937030716
Brochures are really neat, but it's a shame shipping from the US costs way too much to grab any. Shogun Music Muff, or the Japanese version of it - ELEC Industrial EIS-001. I have 3 of these, 2 in box, all NOS. Very hard to disassemble. The tape album, also sold separately (one of the very few) is not well mastered. The signal is too strong and the tape distorts in loud places. That said, it has surprisingly good high frequencies. I have 2 albums and demo tapes and they all share high frequencies that I have not been able to reproduce on my RD-XM1.
My entire portables collection, from the upper left: Sony M-1PD, Olympus SR11, Aiwa HS-M2, Sony M-50, National RN-GZ7. The little Aiwa has the replacement motor governor board installed and works perfectly now! Playing around with it reveals a very odd quirk about the recording function. It's somehow able to record a +6dB signal onto a regular ferric microcassette (Sony HF60), without any distortion. I have no idea how it manages to do that, my Sanyo RD-XM1 makes the same tape distort around +3dB.
Thanks for sharing quaz30, is the AIWA HS-M2 the smallest? I love those headphones, I've seen a lot of ads for them but they don't seem to turn up often, especially over here, how is the build quality? I don't think I realized mini-cassette was that much smaller than microcassette, I've never seen mini-cassette up close.
That Philips cassette up above isn't actually a minicassette - it was called the Micro Mini, I think. A standard minicassette is larger than a microcassette. Aiwa HS-M2 is indeed the smallest stereo micro recorder among all of them, beats all the players too. Makes you wonder if it saw any use in espionage, because it was literally the smallest tape recorder for a whole 10 years. Only the Sony M-909, which was released in 1992 has beat it size-wise. I'm pretty sure the M-909 is the smallest tape recorder in the world to this day, albeit mono. Those headphones are quite nice, if you mean the build quality. Unfortunately, the whole thing just suffers from mediocre quality electronics. I have 3 of these all are not pleasant to use, you can hear the bad caps in the audio, through various crackles and pops and other noises. Also, they are not made to come apart. It's impossible to take the mechanism out without destroying at least one rubber mount holding it in, it's a pain to work on them. What's more, you can physically hear the motor when using the tape player. It's just so close to your ear you can hear it buzzing away, it's not in the audio signal. Great for display, but nothing else.
I've got a Olympus Pearlcorder XR, this is my smallest, just a tiny one and only mono but it does have the Olympus add-on system, I've only seen the radio but there might be other attachments.
I just got one of these. I'll basically take any 80's model if they come as a set like this, but this one's really neat. I haven't heard of this model before, and information seems very scarce. I can only find some past Japanese auction and what should be a pretty informative video, if only I speak Japanese (the guy has a lot owf walkman videos, btw. Naoyuki Ishida on YouTube). It's an almost full set of the Sony M-302. Apparently quite an expensive piece of kit back then. Other than the overall form, what's really unique about this unit is that it comes with an FM transmitter! A modular attachment like the Pearlcorders. There is a switch to choose between transmitting the tape/mic. It's quite a small unit, but very thick for its size. Here compared with the M-1PD
Very nice, the FM transmitter is super-cool, I have a few models with it, I think they only sold those in Japan due to broadcast restrictions in other countries. Looking at the price makes you think that the guys recording needed the best for those high-power meetings. The thing with tape is it's hard to minipulate it after it's been recorded so it has more credibility than digital.
Rare indeed. Pretty neat design. I love the hammered paint finish. I still think that position for the record button is really weird, though.
Does anybody own a National Z600? I just learned about this unit today and I think it's a very cool unit. A real mini boombox! https://www.instagram.com/p/B_V0KNuJa3W/
A National Z600 came up for sale a year or so ago, maybe that one, they tend to go for big money but most of the microcassette boomboxes do, it's the only one I've seen for sale. Here's the little brothers, the Panasonic RN-500 and National RN-Z500. The main difference between these two is the markings over the FM dial include the Japanese TV Channels 1-2-3. These are mono but they do record, there is an 8 ohm output jack, I just have to find the matching speaker.
