What you would expect from a company that makes Jet Engines, Kettles, and Railway Locomotives: a pretty well built piece of kit with almost zero excitement value, no passion, and take-it-or-leave-it attitude to sound quality. Bought on New Zealand's TradeMe site (like eBay, but more Kiwi) for about 6 Euros and restored by me: radio/tape switch glued and holding together OK, one speaker plug needed resoldering, the stop/eject button's mounting was broken so I had to get inventive with that; the tape drive needed a new belt but also one tiny part of the pause mechanism had come apart and was jamming the main pulley (that one was hard to figure out because nothing looked broken until it was partially disassembled); and the speed was a bit high. There are a few cosmetic glitches but those come with the territory as the plastic hardens with age and breaks easily - a bit like people.
The track-ball switches are really neat. I don't think that's a player, it looks like it holds ear buds, very funky fresh.
Yes, the upstairs part holds earbuds, but it's only a holder and you would need to unwind the buds and plug into the actual headset socket - then wind 'em back in again later. Unsurprisingly the originals are no longer with the machine and I have hunted high and low but cannot source a simple basic set of buds in red. Due to "domestic agreements", early retirement, and downsizing, I am buying cheap, repairing, and on-selling; my enjoyment comes from problem-solving and the virtuous deferment of landfill.
@DutchNick You just stole my sentiment which I follow when shopping for my gear: Naim Audio does not know how to make refrigerators but I keep buying their audio Oops, but my cassette deck nowadays is Yamaha!
Yes, in "Clark Kent" mode it is also known as EA3-5618A. You can kinda see why they went for Red Rocker.
Ah yes, imagine the beauty of a Naim refrigerator, while our dear Sony, responsible for some truly beautiful creations (I'm thinking MZ-RH1 here, people) has also unloaded a lot of mediocre rubbish on the world.
"Red Rocker", eh?... Does it playback with "50,000-WATTS OF POW-WAH!"...? If so then "It's your one-way ticket to midnight...!" (Fans of Sammy Hagar will get the references.)
