The Ultimate Marantz, Superscope, UNIX Boombox Thread

Nice find but silly money, I have a feeling if it was over $50.00 USD it would be posted for a while.

 

Superscope bought Standard Radio in Japan in the early 70's, the first time a Japanese Company was sold to a foreign firm. Standard Products are kind of difficult to search for due to the name. Finding information on the Standard Timecat Boombox is really difficult but here's some photos of this early portable. I have no idea if Superscope owned Standard Radio yet. It looks like the model number is SR-T188FJ, the clock looks great on these boxes and would have been a great feature but unfortunately it wasn't adapted.

 

If my memory is correct, Standard was building Marantz Recievers starting in the late 60's, Axel's Vintage Knob Forum is most likely the source for this.

 

Just doing a little research and found some cool tidbits of information, first I found this on Marantz defending the UNIX name in 1984, this is from a defunct Japanese Law Website

8/84 UNIX---COPYRIGHT

Nippon Marantz is sending notice to AT&T and many Japanese software firms to stop using the UNIX, as it owns the copyright on it. AT&T has not responded. Nippon Marantz owns the copyright in Japan to the word "UNIX" in category 11 which covers electrical equipment. It has sent letters to Japanese computer makers to stop using the word UNIX in their ads in Japan. The company says it will file suit if ATT does not respond and promise to stop.

THE JAPAN LAWLETTER, August, 1984. By Roderick Seeman

So I looked up Nippon Marantz and found this...

http://www.nipponhifi.com/en/what-is-soul-note-made-of/

The history of Soulnote begins with the passion of one man, CSR President Nakazawa.
It all started right after graduating from University. President Nakazawa joined Standard Radio Corporation, a company involved in the development of amateur and professional wireless products and radio equipment. Back then, his first assignment was that of Research and Development (R&D) engineer. He was responsible for developing quite a number of revolutionary innovations that changed how we listen to music: he developed then the high-tech cassette tape recorder as well as the player, during the dawn of the digital age in 1982.


These “milestones” in his career can best be described as revolutionary. I seemed, however, that he was destined for greater things

In 1971, US-owned SUPERSCOPE, part owner of US-company, Marantz, bought a 50% stake in standard Radio Corporation. Under the new venture, Standard Radio was tasked to manage R&D of low-to-mid class compo and hifi receivers. Apart from this, it was likewise the sole distributor in Japan. It also transferred most of the manufacturing operations there.

A few years after the digital age began, in 1975, Standard Radio Corporation changed its name to Marantz Japan Inc. In 1980, SUPERSCOPE sold some of its overseas assets to the Netherlands’ Philips Corporation. The sale likewise included the intellectual property rights and sales division of Marantz Japan Inc. The deal witnessed Philips Audio elevating the low-to-mid class status of Marantz products to a premium level. In turn, Marantz was given full access to various technologies within Philips’ arsenal.

One of the fruits of this partnership between the two audio brands was Marantz first CD player, CD63, was fielded to the global market. Instrumental in its development was no less than Nakazawa.

Under the new partnership, Nakazawa continued to thrive in his development work. He came up with such great products as the Philips LHH100, the world’s first 2-body CD player back in 1988. LHH500, the World first bit stream CD Player (1Bit) in 1989 … AV1000, the World first standalone AV controller & power amplifier (2 bodies) in 1989 … LHH800R, the World first Non-NFB CD Player in 1993 and LHH A700 Non-NFB power amplifier in 1994 ..just to name a few. To aid in coming up with such innovations, Mr. Nakazawa likewise coined a few slogans for product development. These include:

“ To develop the ‘World first’, products”,
“ To develop the products that can deliver good quality to customers”.
When the world witnessed the boom in M&A of big enterprises during the years 2000 till 2006, Marantz, Japan, Inc. left the consolidation with Philips. While the company struggled to survive at first, this move eventually led to the founding of Denon as a business partner, who also left Nippon Columbia and sold its take to the paper company. The US investment fund company Ripplewood Holdings LLC formed new Denon. They were all part of an umbrella group of the newly formed D&M Holdings, Inc. via stock transfer in 2002.

Unfortunately, the change in ownership placed a strain on the new company’s working environment. With its investment company closely watching the “bottomline”, production efficiency rather than sound quality, was the top priority. The question posed to Mr Nakazawa and his team was what was more important, quality and integrity or financial gain? The answer was crystal clear: quality and integrity.

Mr. Nakazawa once said that he had a wish to come up with a company to develop dream products for customers. This meant creating a “free from M&A risk” type of business, to develop products by engineers having the freedom without having being compromised by time and what is known is business circles as “bean counters” (financial constraints). In 2004 when management were desperately looking for clues on whether this M&A was the right decision during a Post Merge Integration meeting, Mr. Nakazawa decided to move for a Management Buy-Out, together with engineers who shared the same beliefs and passion. Thus, a number of quality engineers (around fifty) followed Mr. Nakazawa to his new organization.

The new company became known as the first Listed company in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, going under the name of the newly-formed CSR, Inc. Mr. Nakazawa saw his role as one who was there to help fulfill the desires of customers, as well as acting as a support to realize the dreams of the engineers in CSR, Inc. Thus, the brand, Soulnote was born. It was all thanks to the passion of Mr. Nakazawa, along with many engineers’ dreams, that formed this company.

 

A few more ads I've dug up, mostly from 1970's Esquire Magazine. Superscope, Marantz, Pioneer and Sony were pretty big advertisers back then, lot's of cool old equipment to enjoy.

The Superscope CS-200S is one of the first portable stereo cassette players, and check out the Superscope C-105 at $159.00 USD, holy cow was that expensive.

 

Some more UNIX CRS 3.5 Bustang Ads, priced at 32,000 Yen, that's around $320.00 USD, a very expensive mini back in the early 80's.

 

I posted a personal stereo thread below but I thought I would add this up here as well since I'm finding all kinds of great information. My buddy came into town for a few hours and dropped off a package including this brochure that's been listed for a long time. I finally got a copy of it to find what was on page two! For those that don't go trolling down into the Walkman Section, Marantz (of Japan) made personal cassette players into the 80's. Most of these units never left Japan and even today get big money if they're auctioned off. One of the rarest, I've never seen it come up for sale, is the PC200 UNIX. The brochure also mentions "tinypal" but I don't see that anywhere on the player, this unit looks pretty close to a Sony Clone but I leave that to our resident clone expert, autoreverser, to make a final determination.

The brochure was printed in 1981, a year after Sony released the first Walkman in the US. Marantz (Superscope) had Sony Tape Player Distribution until 1979, I have no idea how much Marantz knew about Sony's Walkman and I'm pretty sure Sony had enough brand awareness by the late 70's to not need or want to renew their distribution agreement and go direct.

So the big question is which player is better? My translator didn't finish letting me know what it says, so I can't tell you what the specs are besides that it has 70mW's per channel. The UNIX is great looking but does anybody own one? I've got the later generation and the build quality is top notch so I'd expect this to be similar.

I'd love to have one of these but I've been looking for years and haven't seen one come up for sale, so now everyone can enjoy the UNIX PC200!

 

Sorry nickeccles, I'll have to politely disagree, while our resident clone expert says this does qualify, I still believe it may be much better than average clones. While this kind-of looks the same as yours it does have many more buttons. I own several portable cassette decks from Marantz and all of them have a high-quality build, even the entry level (Superscope) Boombox is nicely built. UNIX Units might even be better and look at the price, close to $250.00 USD back in 82, much more expensive than the brand new Walkman and I'm pretty sure, any of the clones.

 

I would think either AM or FM cartridge or FM or cassette tape?

 

I found this photo in db Magazine (the sound engineering magazine) circa 1972, it shows one of Superscope's duplication plants. It looks like there's a lot of labor involved, almost like each tape has to be loaded manually with very little automation. It' also interesting that they were cranking out 8-tracks, it would be cool to find a Marantz Branded Version. From previously posted articles it looks like Superscope had 2-3 of these facilities around the US.

The magazine can be found on the Wayback Machine or American Radio History.

 

Two UNIX Portables just came up for sale including the ultra-rare PC200. I know nickeccles thinks this is a clone, I still think it's a notch better. Yes the buttons, layout and overall size are very similar but this is Made in Japan quality. Marantz (Superscope) had a distribution agreement with Sony for the tape products which ended in 1979, just before the Walkman was released. The odd thing is this has a reverse layout of the Sony TPS-L2.
I love it, may even bid on it but I hope the new owner posts his opinions here, and hopefully he has a TPS-L2 to compare it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/UNIX-PC200...332373?hash=item288236f815:g:uicAAOSwWZFdQqVi

 

French Review for the Superscope CRS-2204. the "04" should indicate multi-band, this is from Le Haut Parleur Magazine dated March 1980. This is right after Marantz/Superscope split up but we don't know who had ownership of the prized "Marantz" Name besides Philips at this point. It seems Superscope (whom are still in business) decided to sell these "Superscope" Boomboxes in Europe, very rare but the only place we've seen them pop up.

 

marantz Cassette Tapes, I've never seen them before and this is after the split from 1982.

 

Popular Electronics 1990, The Marantz PMD-430 had a pretty long production run, I thought it came out much earlier than 1990 but here's a review.

 

Superscope by Marantz C-205, March 1979

 

Australian Superscope by Marantz CRS-4003S, the name badge is a little different, anybody have this version? From December 1979.