The Ultimate Marantz, Superscope, UNIX Boombox Thread

Marantz CP430 from August 1985, I think CP was used in Europe and Australia while PMD was used in the USA.

 

Well I finally found one of the older Superscope Boomboxes I was looking for, the Superscope CR-3500. This is a JDM 100 Volt Version that was purchased in Japan and it only has the Japanese FM Band. My first impression is always of the weight and this one is heavy, even without batteries it will wear out your arm, with 4 D-cells you might even struggle, the brochure shows it at 9 lbs. The three tuning bands consists of Japanese FM, MW (AM), and SW, the beautifully printed dial has a lighted red pointer that really works like a meter, the brighter it gets, the better the reception. The JDM Version is black dial, it looks like the USA Version is white and only two bands so it doesn't look as "technical". The analog meter only shows recording VU and battery strength, it's small but it's has nice looking details.

Like we usually see on these older boxes, this one also has MIC mixing controls with separate rotary volume dials for the MIC and one for SOURCE. I'm assuming the source is either the radio or cassette but I'm not sure until I get it fully working. There's three sliding controls for the volume and treble and bass, but wait there's more, it also has a tweeter level control hidden behind the removeable front panel. One of the cooler controls, and the first I've seen on a boombox, is a speed control for the tape deck, +/- 20, usually these are on high-end field recorders.

I'd love to pull of the front panel and show the speakers and the tweeter control, yes this has two speakers! but I can't figure out how to get the cover off. The photo on page one looks like there's a tab on the left top and it slides to the right but I don't want to force it, it seem pretty stuck. If anyone knows, please let me know and they will be rewarded with another photo!

This has a semi-military style with an olive green front panel and cooling fins everywhere, especially on the sides which aren't visible. There's a lot of dust in it but a good cleaning should help, the radio works great, the controls are a little sticky and need some lube but overall a nice piece that should be easy to get looking good.

 

It took me awhile to find a magazine with the marantz CAR ad in it. This must have been one of the first and it's from an Australian Magazine. What a beautiful system, it's cool that Marantz carried over the hex bolts but it's odd that the units are different sizes. The amp should have been bigger to match the other units. Anyway this stuff is cool and I have to believe some of the technology filtered into the portable lines or the other way around. These are well built with solid metal front panels, the buttons and slides all move with precision.

Marantz Rolling Thunder Car Stereo

 

She needs a good bath, unfortunately, as you probably know those top mounted controls get the most stuff in them and don't move as intended but it is the best of the late 70's with a ton of little hashmarks and lines. The sliders have a rubber "tire" around them for some cushioning.

 

Marantz PMD 200 and PMD 220 portable cassette recorders, these are mono players but very nicely built. These were used by radio news reporters and seemed to have been very popular.

 

This is an interesting footnote on Marantz DAT Recorders, I wonder who is Systemation? There was a lot of turmoil at Marantz around this time, the wording of the ownership and distribution agreements is confusing and I think Marantz USA Distribution was sold again around this time. Superscope ended up in Illinois, moving from California, who knows how Systemation ties into this. I believe the Marantz DAT Player was made by Philips and private labeled over here.

 

Early Superscope CRS-4000 Press Release from 1977

 

Here's a treat for you guys, this is a Marantz FSK221 Field Support Kit for Marantz Portables including the PMD201, PMD420 and PMD430. These models came out in the 80's and Dynascan Corporation is on the label. Dynascan (Cobra CBs) obtained ownership of Marantz January 19, 1987, buying the 21% interest from The Tushinsky Family. I have no idea who owns the rest but it must have been split up several ways. Interestingly Marantz President Fred Tushinsky decided to sell because they were battered by losses from Pacific Stereo's bankruptcy.

The article above mentions that just a little over a month before they were working on rolling out the first DAT player for the US Market.

The kit seems largely intact, I imagine that studios needed working units and a dedicated technician could service these units in the field. Parts include knobs, switches, piano keys, lots of small black screws, some belts, mic jacks and some cardboard pieces (by the screwdriver) that look like shims or spacers, there's about 20 of them.

Interestingly there's only one small philips screwdriver, an Xcelite P12S, made in USA. I bought the kit awhile back for the small stack of Marantz Portables I own

 

The Marantz PMS-3020 was part of the Gold Series, released around 1981, it is the bigger brother to the PMS-3040 but to me they feel like they weigh the same and they are heavy, if I had to guess, I'd say they have the same speakers as the CH-53 Micro System. Both of these units are very nice looking, unfortunately they were grouped with all of the crappy audio components Marantz started putting out, it must have been a hard sell justifying the cost when the quality of the components nose-dive'd.

The PMS-3020 is bigger, there's a riser on the bottom but the front fascia is identical. The LED's are different, and the tape counter is more to the right. The top has three switches similar to Yamaha Recievers but they look great on the Marantz, oddly, this has no balance switch. The PMS-3020 may be more for recording live, the LED is for recording levels and there's a MON LEVEL 1 and 2 switch options. I'm not sure how this works, the unit has two mic inputs but record is past the RADIO setting. The FM stereo/mono switch says FM MODE/ISS, what is ISS? The stereo and tuning LEDs are a nice touch to balance the level meter, the red on the tuning dial does not light up, it's just paint.

I'm starting to see some of the differences, the PMS-3040 takes Metal Tapes and has a switch for it, it also has a cueing system and line-in. Both have 1/4" headphone jacks and external speaker output jacks, something that's on almost all Marantz Boomboxes.

These are great little units, the PMS-3020 might be considered a large mini, there's not a ton of boxes this size, they're usually smaller or bigger by an inch or two. Both of them are clad in metal, not 100% but pretty close, all of the areas in the front are metal, the back is plastic. The sound is great, maybe it's a little muted but you never get a tinny sound from these boomers. These make great kitchen or sunroom radios where they can get loud but the sound doesn't hurt your ears and it's very clear. I've always like their tuners and I can get most local stations, even the difficult ones.

 

Coming out of Kansas, Nelson's Super Store was advertising the Marantz PMS-3500 for $299.88 in 1982. This was the era of the three-piece boombox, while sometimes maligned, as kids and students we actually thought these gave some respectability to boomboxes, now you basically had a mini stereo, spreading out the speakers gave a better sweet spot. The component lines were in just about every box at this time, even if they didn't split for the elongated look they still had lines that made them look like mini-components. Listening to The Cars, Moving In Stereo, was essential to showing off you little boomers.

 

This is where we first start seeing some of the first cross-branding starting with the Marantz Gold Series being labeled UNIX. Old member ARKAY also mentioned UNIVERSAL was on one of the PMS-6000 Turntable Boomboxes he found in Hong Kong back around 2007. I feel like UNIX was Japanese Market Only, the name was highly sought after and might have run into copyright issues in other countries.

Here's the UNIX CRS-1850, identical to the Marantz PMS-3040 except for the color and the silver speaker surrounds under the grill. This is where it gets interesting, the T-tag shows "MARANTZ JAPAN", this indicates the builder, my Marantz is missing the back plate so I can't see where it was made.

The PMS-3020 I have says the usual, "Designed in USA" but it was made in Taiwan at factory 0910. I don't know why but it may have to do with the 1979 ownership change.

(The photos are from the internet, this is not my unit)

 

Taken from the 1981 USA Marantz Brochure, this is the only boombox listed, very odd. This is the Marantz PMS-7000, the PMS-7004 had multi-radio bands but no built in speaker amps? 10 Watts is pretty impressive, and it weighs over 26 lbs! I don't have any of these big Marantz's yet....

 

When George Clinton's rocking out, he's got his Superscope! From Creem Magazine.

 

This golden nugget is from 1983, I dug this out of a newspaper ad from an electronics liquidator, the Marantz PMS-6000 Big Bad Turntable Model for only $299.93, list $700.00 USD. This may be the only US Advertising for this model. Unfortunately all-in-ones were taking over and not in a good way. Fisher lead the way with really bare-bone cheap systems that every kid had. Boxes like this got caught up and were thrown in the same group. Marantz as a company went from the top to plastic junk as most of the audio manufacturers regrouped from the late 70's heydays when they all had major sales decline.

 

Some more ads found on the net, from 1978, some of the new Superscope by Marantz line



Hopefully I can get my hands on some of these brochures, it's amazing that this brochure for the Superscope CRS-3800, from around 1978, is in full color and looks really well done, compared to the Marantz CRS-4000 I posted earlier that looks like someone cut and pasted it together the old way.




From a Japanese Magazine, we can now date the marantz CRS 3.8 Bustang GT from 1984. Maybe they sent the Sansui FX-700R to other markets that they didn't own the Marantz name. Was UNIX sold off at this point, most likely. At 43,800 Yen, it was pretty expensive.

 

Thanks for the likes Mystic! You were the inspiration that nudged me into the thread. Hopefully this information survives awhile so people can take a look into this facinating brand. I always thought there would be a treasure trove of information but there really isn't, basically it's just piecing everything together and finding these random ads and brochures. Unfortunately a lot of the early 2000's websites (that were free to host) are long gone, those guys used to post everything, the net had some really cool information that has been erased. Luckily with Google Books, Archive.org and AmericanRadioHistory, some of the old articles are coming back into the light.