Hi there,

I'm back with one of my latest acquisition: a rare Pioneer PK-F9. It's indeed a weird walkman, all chromed and I guess a truly rare model. I've never seen something like that.

Does anyone have info on it? I'm curious to know...

Ouch! A nice brick indeed! Seems robust enough.

The head mounting looks alike the Aiwa's bi-azimuth to my eyes. BTW I'm not sure about what can really be seen, but there even seem to be the place for an erase head for the forward direction, though it is packaged as player only.

There are closer photos of a similar mechanism here: http://REPLACEMENT ERROR/topic...ed-by-dottor-walkman and it's definitely not bi-azimuth: the small round plate cheated me, of which only the slice is seenin your photo, at the bottom of the lever. And the erase head is in fact clearly visible when present.

Now that is quite a find Hugo.  I've never seen walkmans as nice quality as the pioneer units.  I heard somewhere that they lost money on every one they sold due to the effort they put into each one.  Not much plastic on these.

A Pioneer Walkman!

Pioneer stands to their motto: "THE ART OF ENTERTAINMENT".

Oh, tell me you didn't pay $45 for that?  That makes me feel ill.

I have the Pioneer PK-3 walkman without the radio.  I bought this unit from a guy who used to work for Pioneer.  He said that most of them were given to employees of Pioneer for meeting sales goals and to store owners.  Very few of them were sold in stores.  It is a very early walkman as he stated.  The thing is made like a tank.  Not my favorite walkman but a piece of Walkman History as Pioneer made very few Portable Cassette Players.  Very nice find and with the box too!  Did it come with the soft zipper carrying case.  I love the black checker look to it very old school indeed!

Engineering, workmanship and top notch materials. Pioneer really did it right on this baby.

What's the story behind the find Hugo? An Ebay purchase or?

bling* bling*

Ha ha ;-)

Not exactly that, but more or less the same 

Wow, this nice piece has started a lot of interest here; much more than I expected. And seeing all your comments, looks that it's worth to keep such a high quality unit.

Brutus: there's not a fancy story behind. I sometimes enter old stores to ask for vintage  stuff I like (walkmans, watches...) and sometimes luck is at your side. This time I found it in a local store. They had in stored in the backoffice with a lot of dust...

I was soo surprised to see such a chromed pioneer unit!

Finally I took some better quality photos of it. Here they go:

This models is heavy, but all the shiny parts in the front are not made from metal, but chromed plastic. So even if the impression it gives is for a very solid metal brick, externally all is plastic, unfortunately...

Anyway, it's quite rare, weird and cool! ;-)