Me too, exactly.  A waste of time.

Arguing over nothing. Come on guys.

I see after looking in the fergy here that the so called 'Digital Tuner' is in fact no more than a hybrid & quite crudely adapted analog tuner......look at the varicap on the tuner board, when did you ever see one of those on a 'digital' tuner??

Now personally I would want the huge 80's digital display over a more boring silver analog dial, but lets make no mistake, this 3T18's tuner is analog with a hybrid digital display - proper PLL or Quartz accuracy it ain't

I still want one though.......

I think Ferguson used a variety of sources for their portable audio. Some were made in Japan, others in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. Presumably OEM suppliers in the Far East were making products for a number of manufacturers, so the same machine could appear under multiple brand names with only minor detail differences (e.g. the badge!) to distinguish them. I know some of the mono Fergusons were identical to those being sold by Hitachi, so whether Hitachi were supplying Ferguson or a third party was supplying both companies is anyone's guess. I always thought that Ferguson sold a reasonably good product at a fair price. Not up there with the best but still a respectable mid-range choice.

Hitachi made lots of radio recorders both mono & stereo as did Sanyo that were rebadged during the golden age in the early 80's

Have seen a Roberts model in a ghastly browny colour yet close up it was clearly hitachi

Also Triumph the Currys brand name did a slightly less glamorous version of that Sanyo mini (is it 7990) machine - It was of course sanyo inside - Wish I kept mine from early 1983

39 second vid to see a Roberts RSR-100 Boombox youtube.com watch?v=nHKMKTWPhc4 Never knew there was this brand of boombox out there

 = this thread is getting so off track....

i have just aquired a ferguson 3t18 and imho can put this to bed as far as comparisons go.it is awfully close in design to the panny 5500 but not the same tooling/components.of that im confident.

superb box though.the best that ferguson have done,by far

Presumably the OEM outfit that was supplying Ferguson (and probably others) with the 3T18 copied the Panasonic design. Everyone was at it so no surprises there. Ferguson certainly rebadged both Sanyo (e.g. Studio 1000/2000 hi-fis in the early 1980s) and also Sony equipment (e.g. HF01/HF02 hi-fis in the mid-1980s) but most of the portables probably came from other sources. Even the big names are doing this now so in some ways companies like Ferguson were ahead of their time.

Again, it's not a Panasonic.  It's an AKA of the GE 3-5286.

Oh and if anyone has a spare Ferguson, I'd love to have it.