the d6c is totally different than a d5pro2. only noobs who don't own both, think the d6c is better than a d5-pro2. but the people who own both.. it's the pro2.. the d6c is a cheap pro2. and that's it. if you want the best=a full deck. so portable it's a dc2/ less portable it's pro2, forget the d6c. yep, this the answer of a person who has 20 years walkman. dc2=portable. less portable=5pro2 or better nagra iv-s. must admit always want a nagra iv-s for 20 years now...the ultimate. but i never use r2r. ach ja. i miss those days. bargains only a few knew
I am not contributing to the hype. The only people that think the Dragon sounds better than CR-7 are people that have never heard it, or like coloured sound. If you like colouration in your music, chose Dragon. If you want something true to the source, then chose CR-7. The CR-7 commands money like Dragon because people are beginning to realise which one is the better sounding unit. The only thing hyped up here is Dragon, because it has a legendary name. Ask anyone about tape decks, the chances are they have heard about a Dragon.
Nice to see some old friends here plus some even older opinions. All I can say is that this is a classic example of how eBay has effected this hobby. Let's face it, it always did but the divide between prices fetched for the usual top five walkmans and the rest has never been wider. It's a market where rarity and desirability outstrips quality and features and in many cases sound quality, which is total madness. A true collector wouldn't rank either of these units as their favorite, I know I wouldn't but we place them highly due to the eBay worth. Stan is right (hello my dear friend), we were paying stupid money for these things back in 2000 and I hope you all kept them? I have a few and I know Conrad has made his into furniture or something. I go to eBay every once in a while and I do wonder who's paying this money but I wager it's the same folk who buy M90's and GF-777's and put them on their top shelf next to their expensive NFL memorabilia and wooden steering wheels. It's all mid-life crisis stuff. But hey, let's look on the bright side, when we all need to cash in to pay for our care homes I think we'll be having the last laugh. Sorry, forgot what we were talking about there. Ahh, DC2/DD9 debate. Come to think of it I don't really think I have an opinion. Again, nice to see you all and I'm glad you're still keeping yourselves busy with this stuff. I'm going through a slight walkman break right now as we travel around the globe with my wife's work and wrestling three children through school/university Settling down in a few years and I'll dig my stuff out again and get on board with it all. So don't go away now.....
hi chris, i dont think we don't go away, after 20 years still going strong. haha, it's the same old debates, i loved those. i haven't sold my collection. stupid, i have 3 each of those, also d6c,d5. i never use those, i almost never look at them. it's a shame, i can't let them go, perhaps someday. travelling around the world, that's nice. i see you are in bucharest now, didn't you live in france? changing places each year? the kids already going to uni, so time really flies.
A colleague summed it up when he said there is a "Nostalgia Wave" that peaks about thirty years after things came out. How many pages have been devoted to people writing about the GF777 and M90, yet I have never actually seen either except in photos, and have no intention of buying one now. Here in the UK you are more likely to see an E type Jag (I saw one out on the road a couple of weeks ago). Luckily I am happy with my VZ2500, or I will be when I've restored it. Those were sold by large electrical chain Dixon's so are far more common and sensibly priced here. Continuing the nostalgia thread but a bit off topic I have started to notice the same thing with computers, e.g. Commodore Amigas. About fifteen years ago I thought I did well to buy a complete Amiga 1200 system for £50 and flip it for £120. Now a similar system goes for about £500. It goes to show you need to know when to sell and when to hang on to things. Hopefully by the time we end up in care homes people will have forgotten about Boomboxes and Walkmans, and the ones having a mid life crisis will be lusting after vintage Playstation 4s and Tesla cars.
@Robu i've bought dd9 for 25 euro another 40 and 60 in perfect condition. have 3 dd9, 3 dc2 nobody wanted the dd9 or dc2 20 years ago. i was the first one 20 years ago on this site which recommended them. actually i prefer toshiba 4066kt more than dc2, but metal casing and portability.. i have 3 d6c and 2 tcd5 pro2. the pro2 is better. it makes me smile. the d6c doesn't make the cut. it's better than dd9, but still. i lacks body. the pro2 is better, it sounds like music should sound. also with it's imperfections. but it makes me smile. but hey, who am I. market decides.
mate, i remeber those discussions from those days, too. i also bought my DD9 at least 20 years ago for the money you pay for a good pizza today, same with my DC2 and many of those others - but we were a bunch of freaks collecting walkmen ! remember that in those days you could buy a TPS-L2 for 5 bucks (true !) for me the i liked the DD9, DD100 and DC2 because they were the top models and with the stunning rising amount of Walman-collectors, that‘s what makes them expensive. there were from the plain technical side much more interesting units made - in my little world a WM-7 or a WM-701c is much more a milestone than a DD9 because of the used technic (and in case of the 701size + feature). maybe the time comes, that my beloved Clonemen become really famous, then i sell’em (as i sold all of my cheap bought TPS-L2 in the „Guardian of the Galaxy- hype) for big bucks and retire completely
@autoreverser don't you miss those days. only a couple of us, i think perhaps 5-10 persons which where into walkman. every week there was a new one to be found. every walkman was cheap only dd100. oja, i remember, also jazzrat was an early one, with some nice advice.
I was reading in awe in the early 2000's but most of my finds were local, in the $1-5 dollar range, I did find some awesome gems, the recording AIWAs were my personal grail because they were so rare back then. I read and learned about about the high-end models which were super-rare around here, a siting would pop up on Ebay but they were always expensive, I've got some ebay screen shots to prove it. So 20 years later I still don't have any of the DD Series but a big box did show up today, I wonder what it is?
yes sir, yes… there wasn‘t a chatroom, nor the possibility to chat - there was tim (jazzrat), posting every now and then when there was a cool unit offered on that brandnew platform called Ebay if you wanted to speak to other members or had something to say in general, you had to send a mail to the admin (paul), asking him to forward or publish it. the whole thing had more the charactre of a „Walkman-fanzine“ than a chatroom. i think i joined the board either in 1999 or 2000 and believe you‘re one of rhe only ones left wich was there allready…
i think, i joined in 2001?? perhaps 2002 there was just a message board. i didn't need to mail to the admin, i could post already. the boombox section was big and walkman only a couple of people @Mister X yes, the aiwa's where also expensive, the 2000/3000 golden series and px1000 was a favo of some
19lexicon78, did you ever see this thread? http://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/i-found-the-old-old-old-forum.4827/
I just re-read this interesting thread. I guess the big difference was that twenty years ago you could still buy a half decent Walkman with Dolby and impressive battery life from Sony and buying new you would have got a years warranty and not needed to worry about stretched belts etc. These were in the 2001 Winter Argos catalogue. Just a £5 premium for a full logic deck ! Of course if you wanted to show off you would have bought one of these from the same catalogue I like the way they qualify the size statement in case something smaller is announced the next month. Regarding the prices the playback only Minidiscs were half the price but then you would have needed a separate deck to record them. Finally I wondered what the most expensive Mobile Phone in the same catalogue was and here it is. Cheaper than a MiniDisk player ! Of course that was when being able to do anything other than make voice calls and texts was considered a bonus, and 180 hours battery life was considered to be average. A colleague had a WAP phone and rapidly decided it was "Without Application Potential".
@Mister X i think there was a forum-layout before that one. this lay-out was almost the same as head-fi, the one before was more 90's looking.
I love the m90 but even to me it is only entry level, there are so many better sounding boxes from the 90's i remember when dd9's were £50 and d6c wasn't much more.....nothing on ebay is worth what people are asking now some guy on boomboxery bought a mint m70, i bet he paid 700 1000 for it weeks after he has said nothing so i bet he was feeling suicidal after hearing it...i paid £200 for mine all working but i paid far to much i just couldn't use it the quality is so bad, the biggest soul destroyer of music lol...to be fair i have tested a few boxes i have left and none work there just not worth buying anymore as there to old and all the caps are failing and i have looked after mine/// sell this shite while you can guys lol as for walkmans if you use them with the shite headphones suplied with them then what do you expect lol and no tape deck is worth 3 grand, not an old clapped out dragon nothing, if it was brand new maybe
Its a hobby like restoring old cars or computers. While I can see the appeal of old cars I don't have room for more than one car, or anywhere to do any work on one. My small garage is so full of stuff I'm no longer sure what is in there. There are quite a few old computers which are hopefully worth a lot more than I paid for them e.g. £3 for a working Atari ST. Back to tape players a lot of people are thinking "buy one while I can still afford one". Different people have different thresholds. I only spend a couple of £100s on collecting each year. The question is whether it is better to buy an old one which hopefully would be easy to repair or a recent one which would hopefully be less worn out. On that subject I read that the 1970s Nakamichi decks had a Dolby circuit made from discrete components. Most of those should still be availble.
I can see Radio Raheem's point of view, sadly more units show up broken now than working, which wasn't the case 15 years ago. I assume most will have sound quality issues from dirty components or failing caps or even 40 year old tapes but it's still so much fun to have a few around me blasting a few times a day. I'm remodelling my listening area and can't wait to fire up a turntable again and revisit some classic albums, it's so much more enveloping then turning on a computer and listening to digital. Luckily I don't mind cracking open cases to do simple repairs, so it's more than just collecting or listening to the music. Is a tape deck worth a few grand? I don't know but at least you can use it to listen to tapes, I feel bad for the collectors that were hoarding Beanie-Babies or Franklin Mint Dishes only to find they were worth four for a dollar at the local garage sale.
In my experience from selling various items on Ebay, the worst investments are items sold as "collectables" because a large proportion of them get put in a glass cabinet (or maybe a cupboard to avoid fading) so there are still thousands in perfect condition. In contrast this is what happens when 99.99% of an item get excitedly ripped open shortly after purchase. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57804089 I wonder if any of my new sealed Dreamcast games are worth much more than I paid for them ? I bought them when everything Dreamcast related was in the bargain bins, including my Dreamcast which has probably only had about 20 hours use.
haha longman im not into computing anymore or consoles, but i bought 2 of these, probably paid way to much but hours of fun lads https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284302334977?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&var=585803305638&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649 and it works on my new 65" 4k tv Fortunate for me i have never collected to make money, just for the fun of it and to use them along the way, if it wasn't for electronics computing etc i doubt i would have collected anything as nothing else interests me lads
