For everyone, I'm sure, their portable cassette deck played a huge part in their growing up. I am no different. 

It took me a few years. And because it did- it matters. I've tried to explain it to folks and they think me an idiot, but I really don't care. It matters to me. 

 Take the GE Walkman, top left. AM/FM cassette. No frills. It's a damn plastic tank. 

Got this for xmas '84 (being denied a Sony). Was a great player until the door broke. but still worked great. Recall fondly Scout camp summer '86 with my super-mix including belinda carlysle and Animotion. and Nu Shooz. anyway. 

In '87 I traded an Apple // disk drive for my buddy's Sony WM-10. I couldn't appreciate it at the time how awesome this thing was (battery cover was missing). But i played the crap out of Kraftwerk's "Electric Cafe" and Run-DMC's "Raising Hell". Loved it. 

By then I knew I needed better. In fall '88 I put on Layaway what I needed to own- the AIWA HS-T600a. Spring of '89 I paid it off. It was the best thing i ever owned until i lost it in '91. 

Out of sympathy my folks got me the Sony WM-FX43, which i used for years. Great stuff. 

 in that time I stopped caring about what Sony and AIWA had to offer and missed out of a lot of things. But I am happy to saw I now own those models that were a part of my past. Which if anyone finds silly- sure, it is. But- makes me happy. 

Mine: first, bought off a school frind for a fiver (bargain), the Sanyo M4440:


Replaced headphones with new trendy Sony 'Fontopia's.

Then in 1986 (having sold the Sanyo for a fiver!) everyone in the UK had a few quid extra following the TSB shares sell off (my brother got mine for me as I wasn't yet 18 & still at school!). I 'invested' around £60 of my money on a Sony WM-60:

& sometimes listened though massive Pioneer SE-450s, which sounded amazing:

I had no idea they got to be such a cult headphone in the DJ arena (http://www.djresource.eu/Gearb.../623/Pioneer-SE-450/). Funny, 'cos i used them for years when DJing without knowing this.

Anyway, that Sony lasted so well, by the time it finally fell to pieces, I had a job & could afford to spoil myself a bit. What HiFi had just done a test of the best walkmen (incl. Sony DC2) & the newest portable CD players (a bit big yet to be called "Discmen"), & for the first time in ages a Sony didn't win. The Aiwa HS-PX101 came out on top & so I had to have one:

Stunning performance in every way from the Aiwa (music search.. on a walkman?), & the zenith of my Life In Walkmen.

The Aiwa was so well built that before it wore out, cassettes had given way to the digital delights of recordable CD & Discmen.

I will not sully this post with mention of iPods    apart from to say I still use the headphones that came with the Aiwa & a Sony SEQ-50 to make my iPod sound it's best. 

So come on you lot, what's your Walkman time-line?

Hi there,

Very interesting post! I'll try to do a quick overview about the walkmans of my life. As you will see, I won't limite myself to tape players...

I first saw a walkman about 1984, more or less, when I was 13 years old. About 1985 I was given a "brand-less" walkman that had very low quality.
Some time later (I believe at 1986) I managed to save enough money to buy my first decent walkman: the Sony WM-34, that I chosed by its dolby system:

I was pleased with it, specially with the great quality improvement over my previous non-brand one. The dolby system worked as expected. But I felt the sound simply... plain.

I often listen to tapes, radio and LPs on the home HIfi, a Technics that I loved so much the bass and treble manual EQ, and the Loudness switch, some sort of bass amplification. Because of that, and the lack of any sound EQ on this WM-34 I felt the sound so plain.

But things gonna change completely soon... on 1988 I saved enough money to buy THE walkman of my life, undoubtely, the one that has been with me for so much time and gave me so pleasure listening: the WM-B39

This is one of the very first walkmans with MegaBass. The very first generation of the revolutionary bass system. It also has something that after that almost no player had: a simple two-way equalization.

This walkman had everything I was dreaming for: auto-reverse, dolby, a good response (for me at the time, 40-15.000Hz) and the ground-breaking MegaBass. Also, it was supplied with the new 'turbo' headphones.
I still remember the day I bought it at "El Corte Ingles" super stores as if it was yesterday. I paid about 11.000 pesetas (the spaniard money at those years) and couldn't wait to come back home to put batteries and a tape. And when I did, I remember perfectly when I turned the yellow switch on... It was like a train passes over myself. I was SOOO SHOCKED THAT I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. I think that there were a few moments in my life where I was so shocked, and this one was one of them.

Actually my player is in not so good condition, but still decent. I managed to find a brand new one  

And now it's carefully saved for the future. I also managed to find another versions that I didn't even know they were released, like this one in beautiful blue:

Oh, this B39 player is so special to me! It was with me in so many moments, giving me music with so high quality, with it's 2-band equalizer that sounds so good! What a nostalgia...

Some time later I sold it to my sister and upgraded to a FX43, same as you Bonzo, specially for the digital radio, but even that this player was smaller and more advanced, I found it a bit fragile and I missed so much the 2-band EQ from my loved B39.

Photo: Soulsyde at HeadFi.org

Some time later, I bought a second hand SONY EX59 that took me to the era where players were so small and had feather-touch buttons:

A good player that sounds good also, but didn't had the personality that the wonderful B39 had. For the first time I could wear it in the front pocket of my pants without looking tacky ;-)

At that time, Discmans were rocking, but I started to focus on the brand new Minidisc, and I bought the fantastic Sharp MS-702:

Oh, how many good recordings and moments gave this little, shiny player... Recently I knew that this player is still very valuable and rare. Mine is in mint condition yet and fully working. Those years I made a growing collection of so many minidiscs, recording from CD players with optical cable. I still have all my minidiscs

And then MP3 era came. In 2000 many people were buying those low-quality CD-mp3 players from brands like Verbatim (the player, the compression and the recordable CD commonly had low quality). I learned enough about how to make good quality compressed music and bought my first MP3 player: the remarcable Creative Jukebox, almost the first hard disk-based player (before the iPod appeared)

This player has the same size as a big Discman, but have a 6GB hard disk and an excellent Soundblaster Live! inside, with all its equalization possibilities and environmental processing, that its still incredible. I don't know about any modern player that has this. It was a bit big, battery lasts only a few hours but open a new world, allowing me to wear so many discs in one player. I remember wearing this player while travelling in the metro or walking in the street and look others with their discmans and walkmans and think that they were in the prehistoria... haha. And now today I'm collecting walkmans

A few time later I upgraded to the incredible Jukebox 3:

Which was smaller, had more capacity and have for the first time FireWire connection, which let me copy so many complete discs in record time.

Then I tried the very small MuVo2, but the sound was plain and unpleasant:

and I sold it some time ago. Then I changed to the fantastic Rio Karma, a small player that still has many advanced features that modern players doesn't have, like cross-fading or a programmable equalizer, as well an internal database. But nowadays I'm totally happy with the incredible, award-winning, and one of the most respected mp3 players on audiophile circles: the small but powerful Cowon D2:

Don't you see anything fimilar here?... Yes, the famous BBE system present in many high level AIWAs...
This little player really sounds so good! Like a good discman, and has many equalization possibilities: BBE, megabass, 5-band eq, surround, even and MP3 restoration system. If you have a pair of really good headphones you can be simply blow-out by it. It even has power up to 50mW.

So if I had to put the most important players in my life in one photo it goes like this:

Can't wait to see what others tell about their players... Long life to music and players!

nice little lot there sir

Well, if we're going digital, I'll add mine too:
In the early-mid 90s, I was so pleased to see Discmen & hifi CD recorders (& the 'consumer audio' bank discs) all become affordable, as the cassette woes of tape head alignment, poorly set recording levels, which Dolby, CrO2 tape recorded in ferric mode, etc. really annoyed me. My first Discman was the Sony D11:

Purchased due to it's band, cheap price *2-stage* Megabass & the fantastic 'resume' feature: Stop your CD & with no battery drain at all, it starts from where you left off days later. Bloody genius, that.
It came with those Sony Turbo headphones (MDR-A10), but with the headphones from my Aiwa walkman, it sounded better: excellent on the low Megabass setting. Also, on the train you often got a double seat to yourself when people saw the big headphones    (remember the days of spare seats on trains in the UK...?). I rather ruined it adapting it to have it's own rechargeable battery pack (it took 4 AAs & I'm a skinflint), so recently, eBay found me another.
After another Discman (that came free with a credit card) which had anti shock protection (yay) & awful everthing else (bleugh), & as the 90s drew to a close, I had little need for portable headphone music, as I now drove to work & had an enormous car stereo (I still do I'm such a child).

Fast forward to 2005 & my first toe into the waters of mp3: a Digisette via erstwhile s2g member 'highvoltage' (who ended his time with s2g under the cloud of a bad deal or two):

Useful when on my way to a gig (it's tough build survives being in a pocket for the evening) & sounded good with a set of decent in-ear-canal headphones from the truly excellent Walkgirl
...The Digisette is extra useful to me for it's ability to make my Hitachi 3D7s tape deck sound new again (the boomer's deck motor is almost knackered but with this in there it sounds good as new). Any boomer without Aux-in can play mp3s with this cool gadget.

..& finally, as so may have, I succumbed to the wiles of Apple.
My birthday in 2007 bought me an 80GB 5th gen iPod video.
With careful mp3 creation it's a good, clean sound source (on line-out thru the data cable). It plays my favourite Sega MegaDrive game: Sonic the Hedgehog (my 4 year old is very good at it!). It plays videos. My car stereo is iPod ready. I have iPod docks all over the place at home (wife & kids all have iPod Nanos). The user interface is iconically good...
I'm only human.

It's still going fine nearly 5 years on (with only one serious malfunction, seeing it unable to start & my rebuilding it in 'Disc Mode').
With a Sony SEQ-50 (an add-on *analog* 5 band EQ) & my old Aiwa headphones (on about their 1000th set of foams) even the headphone output sounds good. Just never touch the iPod EQ settings.
...& that's me up to date 

Anyone else care to share?

well guys, i dont collect walkmans, but ill keep my eye out when i go boombox hunting from now on, its been fun reading your stories.

i had a ferguson personal stereo. i inherited it of my sister it was a huge silver thing had 4 aa batteries in it and the orange headphone mufflers. cant remember the model tho it said something on the cassette door. but then progressed to a aiwa ta253 then a sony metal cased 1 aa battery remote control job.

Fantastic. I had the MD-MS702 a decade ago and loved it so much I recently bought a completely like-new one on eBay with all accessories and have been listening to MDs out of pure nostalgia.

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