I have actually been working on this for a couple of weeks but given the recent news realised I had better post it now. If there are any errors it is due to the rush.

The posts I enjoy the most are the ones with personal stories about what Boomboxes and Walkmans people had when they were current models.
Having recently got a replacement for the Amerex cassette recorder I sold in the early 1980s I realised I could present a timeline of all the cassette recorders I have known from new.

1973 - Sanyo M 2400 FG

This was actually my mothers and was the first Compact Cassette recorder I ever encountered. Before this we had a Grundig International DC series cassette recorder which my Father bought in the late 1960s. I wonder if  the shop saw him coming when he bought it, although I remember him saying how cheap it was compared to the Philips type ones.

Anyway back to the Sanyo. When this was bought my Mother was a Junbior School teacher. The AV equipment in her classroom was an ancient metal cased valve (tube) radio with a separate lodspeaker mounted on a high shelf out of childrens reach. In 1973 a student came to do teaching practice and one day brought in the Sanyo Radio Cassette she had recieived for her 21st birthday. My Mother was very impressed and decided she wanted one herself. A couple of months later there was one of those 2" square adverts in the local paper "Special Purchase. Sanyo radio Cassette only £37.95. Despite that being over a weeks wages she decided to buy one.

I know that was the exact price as the original receipt is still in the box with the instructions, external microphone etc. The price was relative a bargain. A couple of weeks ago while looking at an old catalogues site I found that the same model was in the Selfridges (of Mr Selfridge upmarket department store fame) Christmas Catalogue at £41. Interesting that the Stereo decoder for the £99 music centre wass an optional extra. That is why we didn't have Stereo Radio Cassettes back then. 

She used it, mainly at school, though until about 1983. I still rememeber the level of distortion when the little Sanyo - volume at maximum - was used to provide the music for school shows in a one hundred seat hall. She replaced by one of the small Sony CFS modelsin about 1983..I then used it with my first three computers (ZX81, TI99-4A
then MSX).

August 1976  -  Amerex AC107

This one is a recently bought replacement. My original one was my birthday present in 1976, and was the first new electronic item I owned .
It was bought from Laskys for about £18, when the cheapest shoebox style cassette recorders were about £15. After a few years the speed
started playing up so I started looking for a replacement

December 1980 - Sony CFS45L

After spending about a year looking at what was available I decided on what was then probably the cheapest Sony Stereo box. The decidion was based
on the connectivity of the Sony; it has a proper Line In switch position. For a sevreal years it was both the tuner and cassette deck for my Hi Fi system
(the amplifier of which I built as my college prooject).. The Sony came from the same shop "Sound Seelection" in Bristol, UK that the Sanyo had six and a half
years earlier, as the shop was a short walk from where I was going to college. Due to the impracticality of bringing it home on my motorbike I went there with
my parents one Saturday.at the start of December. Back then, before the days of Switch cards the maximum cheue you could write with a Guarantee card
was £50 so I wrote one for £50 and my father one for £29.99. When we got home I was informed that that was my Christmas present, and I had to wait until the 25th before I could open the box and start using it.

I definitely got my moneys worth from that unit. In 1989 when I was in lodgings, with my Hi Fi in storage, I bought my first CD player so until I bought
another house it served as speakers and amplifier for that. Going off topic the Hitachi CD player cost £60 second hand from a colleague who had upgraded.
The cheapest new CD player was £100 mail order. A friend had just bought a Philips CD Radio Cassette, but they were £200 back then.

1989 - Philips Roller 2  

An impulse buy from Homeworld (the Co-ops home furnishing and electrical store) in Bristol, on the way home from arranging to start a new job. I guess the small size, funky looks and bargain price of £29.99 attracted me. Performance wise it is quite poor. For almost ten years this sat as a decoration on my lounge shelving next to a 1950s  Bush DAC10 radio.

1993 (ish) Panasonic RX-300E

Despite being the most expensive boombox I have ever bought, this was another impulse buy, from Beales department store in Bournemouth. It was in their sale with a substantial price reduction down to £230 and was available on interest free credit. With CD Deck, full remote control, Auto-Reverse and Dolby noise reduction, at the time this ticked every box against my ideal Boombox, although I now wish it had Line In. It even has removable Bi-wired speakers !  I am sure this pre-dated the Panasonic Cobras by a year or two, as I don't remember them being around at the time.

This spent about many years as my bedroom system, with one speaker detached to get better stereo.

So those are all the boomboxes I have bought or known from new. The only other unit that should be included is a Sanyo Sportster walkman bought in about 1982 or 83. Second hand wise I got a lot of use from the main unit of an Akai PJ35 centre unit which I bought in a very poor state in around 1986 and restored back to working order.

I was hoping other people might add their timelines but that might have to be on the other forum. It's been fun guys and gals.

Love these stories, thanks for posting!

Beales in Bournemouth...I remember it well

Northerner posted:

Love these stories, thanks for posting!

Beales in Bournemouth...I remember it well

 

Beales is still there but neither they, or Dingles next door where I spent £450 on a 25" Toshiba TV back in 1989, sell electricals any longer :-(

Cool stories indeed.   I lived in England for the better part of three years when I was a young whipper-snapper.   Never visited many electronic shops outside of base (mainly because I couldn't drive) but I do remember this Amstrad 8060 unit while I was there.  It was brought on base by a local during what was called the July Fete that was held there.  The woofer shape was the first thing to catch my eye and then they wondered around the entire unit.  The owner smiled as he new I was impressed.   I also found a catalogue page showing its smaller brother the 7090.  It tapes tapes!

Nice pictures of the Amstrads. The question is who actually designed and made them ? Although Amstrad did design some of their own products such as the most successful computers on the European market in the 1980s, they bought a lot of products in. I just found an interesting article which describes this:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Amstrad_plc.aspx

Although I knew they had products made by them I didn't realise they owned part of Funai (who have never had a very big presence in the UK).

As for Amstrad themselves the company was eventually sold to Sky TV (the UKs leading subscription TV company) as they supplied most of their set top boxes. Lord Sugar, as he now, is presents the UK version of "The Apprentice" TV show. Quite a success story for someone who started out selling car radio aerials from a van at markets.

I am clearing out my spare room to decorate it and just found the Sanyo M-G11 I Sportster mentioned in my first post.

I guess I bought it about 1982 or 1983. It cost about £30 back then and was one of the cheapest personal stereos you could get which had Rewind as well as Fast Forward. 

A couple of years later I bought a faulty Sanyo MG P600D for a couple of £ which was incredibly easy to fix. A piece of screening metal which should have been stuck to the circuit board screening something had slipped and stuck itself to one of the pulleys. As the MG P600D had many more features like Dolby and Auto reverse, despite being significantly smaller than the MG-11 I then used that.

My last new Personal Cassette purchase was an Aiwa GS302, as the MGP600D was no longer working very well (probably stretched belts).

I don't remember when I bought it but do remember was that it was very cheap, less than £20 for a unit with Dolby. The 1999 Argos catalogue has the similarly specified Aiwa GS392 for £19.99; the cheapest Aiwa they were selling (the most expensive being the PX497 at £48).

Of course, by then you could buy a Sony Discman (D1915) for £60, or complete with car kit for £80. Cassettes were definitely thought to be a bit old fashioned by then. 

For those who are interested all the photos were taken with a Sony DSC-P52 compact camera from 2003 that cost me about £5 and half an hour to get going.

I'd love to list all of my acquisitions since 1979 but there are far too many & I still don't have all of them again!! Most, but not all....................

My first 'shoebox' recorder was in 1979 the mighty 'Waltham W104' from Argos in Aldershot & £14.99

This went everywhere with me until a stereo Waltham radio recorder replaced her..............

I was fortunate to be able to buy a brand new old stock W104 earlier this year.............

Now this was a weird experience, opening exactly the same outer box followed by the excitement of sliding the thing out of it's own box, so brand new & shiny & my best friend for the next 2 years or so! Everything sealed & untouched some 40 years on, it was like reliving that day in 79 all over again

I have dozens of models I grew up with after this Waltham but none as pristine as this  was well pleased to get this one...........

The question is, what was £14.99 worth to you back then? It would have been half a weeks wages to me. Thirty Seven pints if you were buying a large round !

https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/q...0060622071107AAsOwxQ

Ah great story, i really enjoyed reading that, dont know how i missed it the first time round! I better get cracking on my timeline then!

Love this thread :-)

I gave a panasonic rx 300 to a girlfriend many moons ago, nice radio, i also had one new back in the early 90's i think it was about £300 new.....£30 a week to live on those were the days, i had about £30 a week till around 30 yrs old, it wasn't much money back then, great thread btw