It finally arrived, my latest addition to the collection. A Marantz CP430. This is in fact the European version of the American Marantz PMD430.

It is a 3 head portable cassette recorder renowned for it's impressive recording capabilities with Dolby B and dbx noise reduction. It does have a passing visual resemblance to a Sony TC-D5. It is neither a boombox or a personal stereo, but since it is portable (no internal transformer) and doesn't really have stereo speakers this is probably the more appropriate forum for it. Forgive me if you don't agree.

This guy absolutely raves about it Andrew Marshall

Here are some pictures of its unboxing. Images are quite large, so I've spared those on a slow connection with shortcuts instead.

Safely packed

Re-sealed almost new in box

Box opened

Almost out

Everything out

Out of it's cover

Close up of switches

VU meters

Lights on in the dark

3 Head tape mech

Thank you government for buying this years ago and never using it in order to dispose it to me years later in such great condition.

I also have a non boxed one, that I may consider selling if anyone is interested.

wow, never saw a nos one.

A nice amount of suspense and detail there plop.

I love these Marantz units, I have the larger one which I used to use instead of my Nak BX2 as it genuinely sounded better. A nice budget portable which delivered results as good as the Sonys.

Tell me, you're no relation to member Lav Loo are you, bit of a theme there.

Actually no relation. It was more to do with the sound my dad's old Sanyo music centre amplifier made when it engaged "play" from the cassette deck. But thanks for the toilet link

Yes, yes, yes, perfect, those old music centres do go 'plop' as the amp engages. I had an old Sony HMK9000 which did the same. It had tuner preselects which made an allmighty 'SMECK' as you went from one station to another.