Johannes from Braunschweig, Germany scored a very nice Siemens at a local fleamarket. This is the Club 794, a seemingly well-made system with four band radio, cassette control protective bracket and stereo LED meters. Looks like it’s in nice shape, Johannes, a very good deal!
Shawn provided a pic of this amazing Sharp with a spectrum analyzer! He’s partial to late ’80s/early ’90s models. He’s also an avid seller of audio and video stuff on eBay, so see what he’s got for sale here.
Do you prefer the original green leds or these slick blue ones? Yep, Shawn performed a nice little hack to his box and replaced the LED spectrum analyzer. This is great!
Yeah, the RX-7000 is gorgeous, but lookit the RX-7200! It’s a beefy machine (not quite as large as the photo indicates) and the wood sides give it a more refined look than other machines of the day. If you look closely, you’ll see the icing on the cake: that’s not an LCD, but a LED (or VFD?) digital tuner! Have you ever seen another boombox with this feature?
Signature pieces of Sharp’s consumer audio arsenal: The GF-777 and RP-114. Luca (Mitico) from Italy thought the space-conscious turntable was the perfect compliment to the awesome dual cassette 777. Right on!
Apologies for the poor picture of this magical Aiwa CS-W7. It’s one of a handful of boomboxes that had tape decks for standard size cassettes AND micro-cassettes! While companies like Panasonic and JVC were pushing the buck in large machines, Aiwa was trying to make them sleeker and smaller. This rare model sold for a short period in 1983 for around $400. Imagine recording your favorite shortwave program to tape, then dubbing it micro?!
Says Dezzy in Minnesota, “Take a look at this boombox and you tell me if you think it deserves to be put next to Conion C-100F and Clairtone 7980. This was made at the Coney-Onkyo factory in Kobe, Japan during the 80s. The very same Japan factory that produced the Conion/Clairtone boomboxes. This is licensed under the Helix name, model HX-4635. It is a C-100f with nothing changed on it (top deck is autoreverse just like the Conion and has tape rotation LED’s) but the nameplate on the back and the raised letters on the front saying the name ‘Helix.’ This must of been a forgotten model that belongs on the Holy Grails list.”
A boombox under the Technics brand is indeed a rare find. This is their SA-C05, a compact system that outputs a respectable 26 watts of sound. It weighed 27lbs and cost around $400.
James from Philly has an impressive collection of systems, including this Rising SCR-2015. I’m guessing this one puts out 20 watts total…or is it 20 per channel! Wow…
Brian specializes in classic arcade machines, but what vintage arcade is complete without music? “It’s sort of the quintessential 80’s pic, with the ‘box sitting atop my Ms. Pacman cocktail arcade game. This is the only 80’s boombox I have, but it’s the typical high quality Sony with AM/FM, shortwave and a good cassette deck. Runs on 6 “D” batteries and has a voltage selector for 110/220VAC input. I got this about six months ago on ebay, still new in the box. I’ve wanted a classic 80’s portable like this for some time, and was pleased to find this excellent example. Everything on it works great and it sounds good.”
Thanks to Dwayne Colon for providing a whole bunch of pictures to the museum. Here’s his first, a Sharp GF-535. Nicknamed “The Searcher” (for its music search system?) this system has a nice splash of color and some unusual slide controls for volume along the left of the tape deck.
