Possibly one of the first CD playing boomboxes of the 80's, this is the GE 3-7050a 3 piece Portable stereo made in late 1986, with a basic cassette mechanism with no auto reverse and just auto-stop on play, but surprisingly has Dolby noise reduction circuitry. It has a vertical CD player with only track skipping, no ffwd or rewind. Overall a great sounding unit with good bass and treble.

2channelhero posted:

Possibly one of the first CD playing boomboxes of the 80's,

I think you are right about that. How many times did they have to put the word "Digital" on the front to emphasise the fact ?

It would be interesting to know who in Japan actually made this (assuming it wasn't GE themselves) When CDs came out Hitachi seemed to be fans of the vertical CD mechanism. 

https://www.google.co.uk/searc...rc=De0nwFv-bA8c3M%3A

It's possibly made by Sanyo, because that's what it says on the speaker magnets.

I should have payed more attention when I had it apart fixing the CD player and Tape deck as they were both froze up.

Interesting one - thanks for sharing! 

Very nice, i always love a good vertical loading cd player. What i really like about this one is it has that feel of a "golden age" boombox but with the bonus of a cd player. very nice.

love vertical cd players, very nice

Slider-style volume controls can be problematic ... well, tricky. Their loudness can skyrocket or plunge with even modest movements -- that is, increases or decreases -- of the lone volume slider. Or "twin sliders," if the designers choose to pair the VOLUME and BALANCE functions.

But I'm not really complaining, O Heroic-Channeller. (Grin) Yes, I typically prefer shortwave-tuners, despite the obvious limitations of dialing into those 2 MHz-to-26 MHz bands.

And I have since suspected that General Electric rarely, if ever made shortwave-tuning cassette-recorders.

Still, this is a pleasingly -- no, commandingly -- sizeable and pleasingly angular model. The light-blue DOLBY NR and POWER switches have a nicely distinct appearance and positioning on the façade. Makes a change from those TAPE/OFF function switches that so many typically non-CD models came with, presumably in the name of saving on weight and façade space.

No, friend Longman, the front of the 3-7050A is not "digital"-crazy. Though maybe "digital-fussy," now that I just noticed the "DIGITAL SOUND" tone-on-tone speaker labels after spotting "DIGITAL," "Compact Disc Digital Audio Player" and the familiar, industry-standard "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo. But, hey, it's The Big Eighties, right? You really, really, REALLY gotta let 'em know, right? And you've got to appreciate that extra audio source. First jazz tapes, then hip-hop CDs, then AM sports radio ...

Yes, one also notes the ten-"D"-cells battery usage helps put this GE in the Pantheon Of Big Boomboxes.

The LINE IN features give the '7050A even more versatility as a big fancy speaker for world-band receivers.

Speaking of speakers, those detachable(?) sound-blocks make the 3-7050A more truly "stereo" than the biggest one-piece units -- an idea I've mentioned in a previous post or two.

And one hopes that the 50-watt figure truly makes this GE boombox a full-volume, woofers-by-Sanyo room-shaker. (But keep the peace.) And portable stereo's "Classical Age" ensures this big thing comes with a tape counter for indexing home recordings.

"Badged As GE But Powered By Sanyo," eh? Maybe DIY kudos can't go to General Electric. But this (somewhat) portable, CD-playing, stereo radio cassette-recorder would make a handsomely hulking replacement for an RCD-series RCA unit, indeed.

Yes, the slider volume controls are a little sticky. Problematic if you want to adjust to a low ambient volume. Either too high or too low, but definitely lives up to the "50 watt input" label on back. It's power supply and amplifier are one separate circuit board attached to the inside cabinet with a good size heat sink. All the rest of the electronics, cd drive & tape mech. are attached to the face. The cassette mechanism is made like those found on the cheapest boomboxes, possibly to save money because the cd mechanism was more expensive back then. The Dolby logo always indicated to me, a higher quality cassette mech. But not in this case. Overall, very nostalgic to look at, as I always wanted this as a teenager after seeing it in a Jafco catalog!

Nice score, documenting an age of transition in boombox history: not only for the presence of the CD player, but also for the overall design (two features that are typical of mid/late-eighties: prevalence of the black color and presence of detacheable speakers), and the use of less solid materials.

Indeed, a comparable beast to the GE 3-7050a is the Grundig Party Center 3100. Same date of production (Radiomuseum says 1987 --with a question mark -- but I don't trust the accuracy of that site and I have reason to suspect that the box dates back to at least 1986)

Grundig Party Center 3100

Signs of the times: it has a vertical CD player, 5-band graphic equalizer, slider volume control, digital CD display and a cheap tape door -- if compared to the almost indestructible doors of its ancestry: the glorious, tank-like and elegant Party Center 1000 and 2000.

Soundwise, the 3100 cannot touch the patriarchs (real hi-fi units: the 2000 is almost as good as the Telefunken Studio 1M!). But it sounds very loud and clear, with powerful basses and almost no distortion at high volume. I think a good comparison is the Lasonic L30 -- and, most likely, your GE

Being, that I'm from the US, my GE has probably never been seen in the UK? That Grundig Party Center is very comparative! Even has the same "cheap" tape deck!  And angled LED meter!

I was looking for details of the original Sanyo and found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHd2ruAAGJc

similar to the two above but not an AKA.

I don't know if the Grundig Party Center 3100 is rare in the UK; it is not impossible to find in Italy, where I live; and I guess it's a relatively easy find in Germany. What I do know is that the GE is a new entry for me -- and I guess also for most members

I do not own a Sanyo MCD 200 K despite the fact that I'm Sanyovar but I've always wanted one. It's neither an aka of the Grunding nor of the GE, of course. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Sanyo may have produced parts for boxes other than the GE (Grundig included, although I haven't checked it out).

As I wrote in my previous post, early CD boomboxes have a lot in common among each other.

samovar posted:

Nice score, documenting an age of transition in boombox history: not only for the presence of the CD player, but also for the overall design (two features that are typical of mid/late-eighties: prevalence of the black color and presence of detacheable speakers), and the use of less solid materials.

Indeed, a comparable beast to the GE 3-7050a is the Grundig Party Center 3100. Same date of production (Radiomuseum says 1987 --with a question mark -- but I don't trust the accuracy of that site and I have reason to suspect that the box dates back to at least 1986)

Grundig Party Center 3100

Signs of the times: it has a vertical CD player, 5-band graphic equalizer, slider volume control, digital CD display and a cheap tape door -- if compared to the almost indestructible doors of its ancestry: the glorious, tank-like and elegant Party Center 1000 and 2000.

Soundwise, the 3100 cannot touch the patriarchs (real hi-fi units: the 2000 is almost as good as the Telefunken Studio 1M!). But it sounds very loud and clear, with powerful basses and almost no distortion at high volume. I think a good comparison is the Lasonic L30 -- and, most likely, your GE

Yep, this big, wide, stirring Grundig Party Center 3100 was more than likely built -- and probably also designed -- by Sanyo or some other East Asian company. It's unlikely that the engineers of that German firm designed -- let alone built -- any machine with those crowd-pleasing, Eighties-typifying looks all by themselves. Maybe a German company like Grundig still made audio electronics in Germany in the mid-1980s, but strong-selling boomboxes probably weren't among them.

(Unlike that other German brand Nordmende, which I think stopped making TV sets, Spectra or otherwise, in Germany in the early Eighties -- unless, of course, I'm wrong ...)

Well, I was going to ask our man samovar if this Grundig has a tape-deck counter, because I couldn't find one quickly enough.

But I suppose that I have located it: below one of those two relatively spaced, round buttons directly above the cassette deck. The possibly rounded counter-reset button is below -- and seems to be roughly between -- that round button and some sort of a mini-jack. The headphones jack is to the lower left of the then-novel CD player, so that other jack isn't for circumaural or supra-aural gear. For microphones, maybe?

And, yes, you have to love the bolder, more materials-involving sculpting of CD-player doors in boomboxes in the Eighties and perhaps also in the early Nineties. As perhaps alluded to by 2ChannelHero and by Longman earlier in this thread: it's about touting the novelty. The then-new format that shuns tangling tapes and eschews (literally) groovy but big discs that typically require you to stay home to play them.