Hi everyone, was looking for a simple radio boombox to use while finishing a new detached garage for our house. Saw this on Facebook Marketplace for 45 dollars and decided to take a chance. It appears as though it’s pretty complete, including the seemingly hard to find 4 prong AC power cord. There is also a 1972 rechargeable battery pack that hopefully I can modify with some new cells. The radio itself charges the battery pack if cord is plugged in. I don’t think any work has been done on this for a long time, or possibly even ever. All of the functions work that I tested but I haven’t tried the built in stereo mics yet. The 27” antenna is broken in two places so hopefully I can find a near original looking replacement. It works even with the stub portion but I’m sure will work better with the full length antenna. The volume pot is super scratchy and some of the toggle switches are touchy as well so at absolute minimum it needs a good deoxit servicing. Parts units are pretty cheap on eBay but I’ll want to avoid that if I can help it. The aluminum faceplate has basically no scratches on it and the plastic case is dirty/grimey but my guess is this will clean up really nicely. Although everything seems to work, the audio is pretty flat and thin so my guess is there are plenty of out of spec caps. I know I don’t want to mess with anything with the tuner as I’m not an FM alignment kind of guy. Definitely looking forward to learning more about these. People call them the “first boombox” and also point out that famously Tom Petty used one of these to record his band practice in the early days. Any thoughts or opinions greatly appreciated. I post on the Walkman forums occasionally but this is my first boombox post
It's a nice compact style / look and that is why I tracked one down a couple of years ago Deoxit and enjoy! FM radio at close proximity should sound impressive with the "Matrix Stereo Sound". As in right in front of the listener on a table or sat on their knees. Really cool early "Surround Sound" effect. Mine has the old NiCd battery pack too. It crossed my mind to change the cells inside, but, hmmm, to pop that battery case open without damaging looks tricky. I have yet to try. For the radio and cassette itself I spent way too much time and effort in re-capping. And changing a dozen or so transistors to track down a crackling left channel. You have probably already seen my discussion thread on the Sony CF-550 already. (But here is a link for future readers who maybe have not seen it yet.) (Gawd. Never. Again. No more vintage Boomboxes for me. The stress was too much in my obsessive need to obtain perfection and get everything working. My personality type is not good for this type of work. Too destructive in terms of stress.)
Ha! thanks for the comments and yes I did see your thread. Have to admit your concept of "first I did this, and then it sounded better, and then I did that, and it sounded better yet" was certainly inspirational but given your comments, maybe I'll back off on targeting "as good as it can be" to more of "good enough". I may start a different thread if I go beyond DeOxit in pursuit of good enough. I thought I was close to getting a Sony FH-215R here in the Minneapolis area but seller pulled it down. That's more of an ideal "all in one" for me. I'll keep looking. Other issue with this CF-550A is any work I do detracts from my real passion which is collecting and restoring Sony (and other) Walkmans. End of the day, it's all good. Gotta have a hobby. I just have too many of them... Cheers
I'm glad I got the CF-550 sounding great again though (and the CF-490 (CF-1990 in Japan) and CF-480 (CF-1980 in Japan) and CF-470 and CF-160. Had my fill of the old Sony's and got some indigestion Check out the "modern" early 1990's Panasonic Cobra boomboxes for much better sound. I picked up a DX-R707 on local e-bay for $65US that was fully working. Amazing sound! A must buy in my opinion just to experience what an ugly plastic boomer can do. I have a thread on it here. Panasonic RX-DT75 is another one. But be aware they would need an electrical engineer to repair if they break down as such complex electronics. And a bit ugly overall too. But they can be cheap if you are patient and are persistent in searching.
