Picked up a Sony Secutive BM-12 from 1978 with its original box and accessories. There are not a ton of HD pictures of this thing out there, so I took a number for your view pleasure. Some things I'll say about the device: Obviously very well made and premium like the rest of Sony's portable dictators and subsequent Walkmans. The speaker on the back is okay, though there's a possibility I may have soldered the wrong terminals to the wrong parts of the speaker since I had to resolder it. Microphone is good, but sibilant. You can only use mono headphones. Speaking of the headphones, they sound worse than they look, but are frighteningly comfortable to wear and have a good seal. The mechanism inside uses the same parts as the TCM series and the Walkman TPS-L2/WM-3 so you will be able to use the same belts, rollers, and idlers. The leather case is up there with the D6/D6C case in terms of feel and design. The TPS-L2 and WM-3 never really had great cases, and I especially despise the case for the WM-3. But this case with the big singular door and window actually protects it. The only drawback of course is the lack of a belt strap (But then again there is a supplied lanyard.) Awesome to have this little piece of history, especially in the condition it's in.
Very nice ... I have a tcm 600B Black but no accessories .. just a Sony branded zippered case ... I really like it very good purchase
No i believe the TCM-12 came out much later as a derivative of the Walkman WM-22 ->https://walkmancentral.com/products/tcm-12 the TCM-12 was mono only? While this has a stereo head. One channel for recording, the other for indexing which could be heard on any E-IDX compatible sony device so it would be used like this: A business man (or woman) would dictate his message using this machine, occasionally sliding the E-IDX switch to the start position for 3 seconds to separate dictations or add “chapters.” Then the tape would be passed to a secretary who would insert the tape into his or her E-IDX featured sony playback device, which would allow him or her to skip around the tape and scribe.
I took a couple of my photos ... I add them here ... so you can see the differences between the two models ... and a Mono ... and the head and the Sony AC.97
If only the the little thing could play/record on that MA-XG! Not that the recorder would be able to take advantage of such a tape anyways lol. Good pictures though, it's interesting to see the subtle differences between the two. The extra slots above the head on the play mechanism, lack of E-IDX, the relocated pause button, and the thinner ornamental piece. From my experience disassembling the BM-12, I can make sense of two of these differences: 1. the thicker ornamental piece on the BM-12 makes it an absolute pain to remove it from the device (the transport controls have a small lip.) So a thinner one might remove easier? 2. The location of the pause switch on the BM-12 is the reverse action of activating E-IDX. the location of this switch on the ornamental piece requires a number of jumper wires shoved into the empty space of the ornamental piece. These wires are also a great pain to maneuver around, so relocating the pause button to the top would remove the need for the messy system on the BM-12. It was this or the BM-12 for me, I ultimately choose the BM-12 because I so happened to find a shockingly good deal, and for its genealogy! (The basis of the Proto-Walkman)
