I don't see why not. In fact you could make an adaptor is you wanted. The pair on the left are definitely airline headphones. KLM is the Dutch national carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLM I wonder if you had to buy them, hire them, or if they came with a First Class ticket. Most airline headphones seem to be comparable to the ones you buy at the market for £3.
When I spotted the prototype walkman , more than five years ago , I couldn't imagine that someday I would be able to find an official information behind the thinking for the project. It is a page from a Sony document/article from 1989 , It was hard to translate it ,using OCR , it took several hours to make it as accurate as possible not altering wording and syntax , anyway here it is. Enjoy ! Original page : TRANSLATION : " First Walkman TPS-L2 Release date July 1, 1979 ¥33,000 The prototype of the Walkman is the small monaural cassette coder TCM-100 that was called "Pressman". To put it a little more accurately, the pressman's head is made into a stereo, and a cue signal (a mark signal of the recorded content) can be input to one channel. It is a tape recorder called BM-12 STEAED. (Mainly sold overseas for dictation recording).. It was a very lucky event. Sony has been "miniaturizing " with the slogan of "higher performance," there was a kind of culture rooted in trying to make everything smaller. That led to the result of this timely merger of the two projects. Increase the signal output from this stereo head , most of the width and output to the two earphone jacks separately for L and R are only electrical modifications. The Walkman prototype was completed, and the first Walkman TPS-L2. This high degree of perfection later determined the success of the Walkman. In this way, the TPS-L2 would not have been such a hit if the highly complete model wasn't released. "With such a small tape recorder, there should be no sound that can withstand listening to music." However, if you listen to the prototype debuted with big size headphones , contrary to the image from the prototype, the headphones sound surprisingly good. This surprise led the Walkman to success. That was the first key point. After all, the second point of success of Walkman is 40g ultra lightweight headphone (MDR-3L2) It can be said that actually, this headphone it was not developed in for Walkman. As a result, a weight reduction project whose final goal was to release "sude" type headphones in 1982, three years later, was secretly underway in another design department. With a motor and two AA batteries laid out, it was a fairly small machine at the time (Photo: lower middle). " It will be an explosive hit from 1979 to 1980. " So officially : " The prototype of the Walkman is the small monaural cassette coder TCM-100 that was called "Pressman". To put it a little more accurately, the pressman's head is made into a stereo, and a cue signal (a mark signal of the recorded content) can be input to one channel. It is a tape recorder called BM-12 STEAED. (Mainly sold overseas for dictation recording).. " If anyone can improve the translation or correct errors , feel free to do so.
Interesting indeed. I have yet to get a BM-12. None have showed up around where I live. Been wondering though about the difference of the TCM-100/600 and the BM-12. This finally answers it.
I'm glad the article mentions the headphones. I have mentioned before that at the time the headphones were considered to be a much bigger breakthrough than the "small tape recorder". People had seen similar size devices since the late 1960s, but the quality to weight ratio of the headphones was unlike anything seen or heard before. http://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/40th-anniversary-of-the-walkman.4546/ If you go to The Walkman Archives post you can watch a video from 1980 about "the small tape player" and the impressive headphones.
Great find Machaneus! The headphones were for sure the game-changer, nobody wanted to walk around with normal size "huge" headphones on their head, it just wasn't cool. The tiny headphones got everyone looking, there were a lot of other small players out there including all of the microcassette dictation recorders but the headphones were either huge or the little single earbuds. Sony started cranking out some really nice headphones, at one time the Sports Model were the ones to have.
I always walked around with large headphones, headphones like this went straight in the bin lol as the sound is so poor, at least it was back then lol never liked in ear either, used to fall out or hurt your ears....people say koss porta pro were good but had 3 pairs and gave them away
It seems large headphones is the new trend , I see more and more young people in the streets wearing them.
I have always used large headphones my friend, mind you not any more as im stuck indoors these days....we are not exactly in fashion anymore as most of us are over 50 these days lol
Sorry that you are stuck at home RR , I enjoy also my music with my headphones at the comfort of my home , I belong to the over 50 league too , maybe we are not in fashion anymore but hopefully we are in the classic category ! ( Dictionary 1st option . Classic : judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind )
i have 2 pairs of headphone, sony xb1000 (which i tried only yesterday but only work on 1 side) and a pair of sony mdr cd 3000 which i can't find, would love a pair that work as it's not fair on others at night...and i do enjoy good headphone sound, a good wm d6c can sound superb on a good pair... nice to see you posting buddy hardly anybody of the old forum posts anymore, all to do with kerfuffle when walkman archive took over, if it weren't for him this forum would be long gone bud....i used to like my walkman sounding like an expensive hifi not a walkman lol
I have noticed that as well. The most alarming is when you see people driving cars wearing them (which is probably illegal). Looking on the Argos website there don't seem to be any lightweight Sony headphones. When my sister wanted headphones last Christmas I ended up buying her these https://www.argos.co.uk/product/2669102 which seem to be really popular. But also these https://www.amazon.co.uk/JVC-HA-L50...keywords=jvc+headphones&qid=1598475171&sr=8-6 since I knew she would sometimes want to take them to work in her handbag. p.s. I'm in the over 50s too while my sister is in the over 60s, yet we are both having to go to work.
Maybe an easy fix like cable or jack replacment ? We have to move on from that period , the whole thing was a mistake , above all , Walkman Archive the members of the old forum that not posting anymore and current members are all great enthusiasts , we have to appreciate each other. That is the bond. Just my two cents.
I wear large headphones now but they stink! Mine are for hearing protection on the jobsite, my best ones are 3M WorkTunes with Bluetooth. The foam surrounds are nice and supple but today it was over 90 degrees F and they were just too heavy and sweaty. If it was just to wear and listen to music, I'd pull out some vintage Sonys and be much more comfortable.
https://www.service-ivanov.com/?portfolio=sony-portable-dictator-bm-12 I found this ... you can see the bm 12 open and disassembled ..... I would say that the belt and mechanics of the engine are identical or very similar to the tps l2. Electronically it is different for obvious reasons ... After all they already had everything but assembled in a different way ...
