Hello to everyone. I'm michel and it has been twenty years since I recorded on a cassette or listened to my (now gone) Toshiba walkman. I've got a dozen of tapes with music recorded directly and randomly from the radio broadcasts of the early Nineties... I think it's time for me to go back to this undiying media, making mixtapes again and listening to my old low quality library... But first, the hardware. No cassette deck, no walkman, my dear old Aiwa combo (1991?) broken beyond repair, not a functioning tuner to be found anymore in my house. In the meantime... everything changed. Even CD is considered vintage, now. Luckly, I found this forum, along with Techmoan youtube channel and the excellent Walkman Archive. If I hadn't, I would have wasted my money buying the wrong stuff. Please, help me to rebuild my mixtape empire by giving me advises! But first, let me congratulate with you for your knowledge, your passion, your love for vintage gear. Cheers
Hello Michel and welcome to the forum ! It's always a good idea to do research before buying vintage equipement, as there is a lot of speculation going on on these products. A lot of sellers want to get a very high price for their old device, others are buying at small prices and want to sell at 2-3 times the original price without restoring/repairing the device. Fortunately, there is plenty of information on this forum, so you have a lot of information to do research. Toshiba walkmans are one of my favourite and they seem a little underrated compared to Sony ones. What Toshiba walkman did you used to have ? As for the CD being vintage, there are good parts about that: one is that not that many are made, which means not that many will be thrown in the garbage. The fact that it's a collector's item nowadays adds even more to that fact that it's unlikely to be trashed. Unfortunately, the vast majority of optical discs are made for Sony PlayStation consoles, being produced in the hundreds of milions (probably bilions), at least to my estimations. And a vast majority of these will likely be trashed after some years. Streaming is what 95% use in terms of music and that's to be expected due to the convenience and the sharp rise in wireless headphones sales, business which makes bilions and is projected to rise 500% in the next few years. On the other hand, there is a rise in niche audiophile equipment and vintage products as well. So the overall picture is very good in my opinion.
Hi Valentin. I had to steal a pic from the web, my walkman was exactly this model: Bought in 1989 and I'm sure that I kept using it at least until 2002. 100% plastic and quite pricey, too. I can't vouch for its sound quality, it was probably enough for me, at that time. I also used to employ cheap headphones. The built it tuner, instead, changed my life, but this is a long story... I tell you a curious thing that always puzzled me: the FM frequencies didn't work when the unit was being powered by an external DC power supply, all I got was white noise, but worked perfectly if I used batteries.
Welcome. If your tapes weren't recorded on some high end equipment and you don't need Dolby I don't think you need to spend much money to listen to them again. I don't think I have spent more than £40 on a used cassette player and that was for a fully working unit. I am also 95% certain that with that sort of money I could go to the local charity shop and pick something up. A few years ago I bought a Panasonic system similar to this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115092387693?hash=item1acc0a776d:g:xuMAAOSwA5Fhbe1q for £35 working and complete with speakers. I wouldn't like to count how many devices capable of tuning into radio I have in the house. Probably over 100. The result of collecting them for the last 50 years.
Welcome to the forum, good luck with your search, there's a lot of equipment over there that should work fine. I'm with Longman, get something that works, if you like it start moving up the ladder. The odd thing is the more basic the player, the more likely it is to still work, the complicated stuff always needs something done to it.
Hi Longman. Most of my tapes were recorded on an Aiwa combo system of debeatable quality, and on an Aiwa boombox of even more debeatable quality. No Dolby, all of them Type I. Last week I borrowed my father's TEAC deck and had a quick listen. Result: yes, the quality is very low. No lows, no highs and what is left of the mids is slightly distorted. Yet, at that time, to me they sounded as if they were produced in a big studio by Alan Parsons. Can my perception of music have changed so much, with time? Fast forward to the present: I don't want to make the same mistake, and I wish to record tapes at the best quality possibile, with the correct bias and the appropriate volume. So it will have to be a deck of decent level, I guess. Or a minidisc, someone suggested... And I wish to get a walkman again, but I'm very undecided. I really wish it had radio and recording, but from what I read these are the worst machines to go. So, which are the good ones? The DD series is a safe choice, it seems, and some specific Aiwas, but what about other models or other brands? Sometimes a well kept Panasonic RQ-SX65F pops up on ebay, but is this a jewel or trash? I don't know... Also, I'm considering a boombox and/or a combo system. But is there a compact system that, if not exactly "hi end", still sounds very good, with a well designed headphone out? If you prefer, I can make specific threads in the appropriate sections about my questions.
Recording tapes is a very low priority for me, especially now I don't have a cassette player in the car (or any easy way of fitting one), although I was thinking the other day (as I struggled to change the radio channel using a stupid touchscreen) how convenient it was to use. Being able to play all my old tapes is my main priority. In the last week I have rediscovered two that I hadn't hear for years. I completely skipped MiniDisc as I didn't feel the need for a fourth format to add to Cassette. LPs, and CDs. I do have several Sony MP3 players for playing CDs in Wav format (one day I will change them to FLAC) You mention Techmoan. I almost posted this in my last reply, but thought it might be too U.K. specific Did every Italian Grandmother have a Mini System as well ?
Not at all!... I can assure you that Italian grandmothers actually hated mini systems and loved small radios!... Instead I noticed that, in Italy, mini systems had the tendency to end up in small offices, beautician shops, designer showrooms, tanning salons, dentist waiting rooms... they were a sort of "business stereo", so to say...
