Great find, it's hard to tell but the quality doesn't seem to be that great. The Nikken Name doesn't pop up over here, I'll have to look through the Japanese Sites.
i have just spotted this Sony M-50 on Ebay UK which is a nice but costly unit https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Very-rar...932139?hash=item4dafae85eb:g:gFAAAOSwWr5fEC5r
Unfortunately haven't been able to get that Nikken - it sold for too much. Novelties aside, I didn't feel like paying $25 + $25 shipping and VAT on top of that.
Those are really neat henrypal but I've only seen one for sale over the last decade or so. I love the the microcassettes with radios and have pick up quite a few over the years but not your model.
I have recieved my M-301 in the post today. It's a marvel of late 70's engineering inside. It's a very tricky unit to get back working. There are a total of 3 rubber rings in the mechanism that are responsible for FF/REW as well as just rotating the take-up reel during playback. I've got my unit jury-rigged by putting a flat rubber belt over the capstan flywheel. This fixed the issues with spools and FF/REW but has introduced incredibly high wow and flutter. I will order replacements for those rubber rings as soon as I can.
Also, this unit has some kind of tape skip functionality referred to as "memory". It's electronic because the head is stereo and the device mono. I have no idea how it functions though, I also don't understand why this model has *two* rewind buttons and one of them can't be activated.
With Memory Counter ON, it is pressed to zero the count, after advancing the PLAY, when we do the REW, it stops at zero. Size, belt please. Thanks
Oh, I see. So it doesn't work on mine because the counter belt is broken. I think the belt was like 55mm at 0.8mm thickness.
Do you have the measurements of the three belts, any data about them ...(or Service Manual)..? Thanks.
You mean the rubber rings? 1mm thickness at 5mm and 3mm circumference. I haven't measured the largest one.
There are only two. I haven't measured the counter belt and I gave you the measurements of the main drive belt above.
Two actual albums, not demo tapes. Turns out there are way more micro albums than documented - these were all made by Panasonic/National. The first one was the blue and white "The Best 4" tape bundled with the National RN-GZ7. I have the 2nd and 7th release, so there were at least 4 more albums made by National.
Great find quaz30! Those are amazing. One of the local store owners said he had boxes of "mini-cassettes" with hundreds of live concerts in the Twin Cities. He had been given the collection by the owner, I was hoping to get a hold of it and digitize the music but the store closed before I had a chance. I never saw the tapes but was hoping they might have been micro-cassettes.
It takes a long time to scroll through this thread but I don't think this sharp has been posted, the Sharp 3P-40U Microcassette Boombox. These little mini's have a cover that hides all of the controls and it's packed with cool features including AUX in and antenna jack (which is very rare for most small portable TVs. I think this was made around 1982 when Microcassette TV Boomboxes looked like the new rage, unfortunately it died fairly quickly but these are some of my favorite boomboxes and for a busy executive they were pretty practical for late night work while watching a game.
I've posted this beautiful rare Sony KV-4100 in the TV on the Radio Thread if you want a little more information. This is one of my favorite and hand's down winner for the executive TV and Microcassette Player. I think this is portable with an optional battery case that mounts on the back. The PUSH button on the side releases the rotation lock to change the angle of viewing. I consider this to be a top-notch build for Sony with a ton of inputs/outputs and mostly metal construction, nothing on here feels or looks cheap. With the slide on transformer on the back it's a substantially heavy unit but at the same time it's pretty small and only takes up a small corner of your desk. The one drawback and biggest letdown is that the tape deck is only mono but they probably used the guts from the BM-600 to make the tape deck.
