Many months ago,I found this J.C. Penney 680-3091 3-piece at a thriftstore.When arriving home it was put aside and forgotten.The day before yesterday I noticed the CD input and decided to take it to work for evaluation.Setting it up when I arrived I plugged my Ipod touch into my Sendstation line-out mini-dock.This was fed through a single Boostaroo amp and into the RCA CD/Aux jacks of the blaster.Usually speaking I like my boxes to be plenty loud at 50% volume level.Unfortunately this unit didn't attain my typical listening volume until 75% rotation of the volume knob.However I was happy.I like my blasters loud and this one just passed the test.This boombox has the power I need but not extra power to spare.The bass is decent depending on placement.Also highs are good but not great.I did notice that strings and cymbals had a nice sharp ring to them so I decided to open up a speaker to check out the tweeter.
As you can see there is some speaker "psych" going on.The tweeter cone seen from the back is fake.Instead I found a disc style high frequency driver wired up just behind one of the speakers port openings.This boombox sounds really pretty good with guitar rock and '80s synth pop.However when playing some of the more demanding electronic music with lots of different sounds mixed into every range it tended to obscure some detail.I have to wonder if a proper tweeter could clean the mids up a bit and restore some of the details.Actually though most music sounded really nice,especially for the $8.00 I spent on this unit.
At some point I remembered a smaller 3-piece boombox I had at home which had the same angled backwards slope to its front.I brought it to compare to my J.C. Penney as it was a similar style though a different make,a Magnavox AW 7790.As you can see the boomboxes were made in different countries.
Interestingly I found the unique speaker mounting grids to be identical on the two boomboxes.Also the clips to secure the speakers to the main units were not only the same design but were the same exact size.This allowed me to take one of the clips from the smaller Magnavox to replace a broken one on the larger J.C. Penney box.
Though it's obvious at this point that my J.C. Penney was made by Magnavox I cannot find a Magnavox AKA for it in the database.It is also not found in my database 2.0 as a J.C. Penney either.There are a lot of people here who probably don't care for these later '80s/early '90s models.However with its big sound and aux. inputs I'm sure I will get a lot of use out of it at work.This thing puts out a lot of sound for what I paid!
here we go with the phil-mag aka:
phil-mag-aw-unkn IBBN 7-09121
info about
Foster speakers.You got nice boxes there Jovie.
Your comments are very informative.
Nevertheless :
meanwhile it is very hard to verify in what country boxes are MANUFACTURED.
Just an example:Political relationships are often responsible the "MADE IN xxxx" description on the backside stickers.
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TAIWAN states officially :
43Billion us$/year business with TAIWAN.
CHINA states oficially :
160Billion us$/year business with CHINA.
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In Eu you can find the same electronic devices: sometimes "made in china"
sometimes "made in taiwan"
i.e.:China DELIVERS to
TAIWAN
MALAISIA
MACAO
among others
We opened some boxes from "malaisia " the innards said-china again.
The custom regulations/tax rates differ
in all countries.
The sticker description (made in xxx)has nothing to do anymore with the product`s origin!It could be an assembling-branch or just a registered letterbox.
For a more modern design, I really like these. Nice finds!
