Minidisc Walkmans, Batteries and Chargers

So the year was 1998 and I had had my Sony MDS-JE310 Minidisc deck for some time. I can't remember if I just really wanted one, or the prices of these units had come down to a price that was more reasonable, although I am assuming the latter because this model seems to have become ubiquitous; if there is a Minidisc deck for sale on eBay there is about a 90% chance it is this model.

I can remember thinking it was like magic in a time when recording songs off the radio was most definitely still a thing, the way it started recording 5 seconds before you even pressed (un)pause, absolutely no bleed from the end of the last recording to the next, the fact that you could edit things after the fact down to very frame (1/24th of a second, and yes, that came from the fact that Sony originally used video tape to record digital signals), and sound that was pretty much indistinguishable from what was being recorded.

There are a couple of things I remember from making that purchase;

• Asking the salesperson if the TOC data was also copied across during recording (his answer was no, the actual answer is sort of, or yes for the purpose I needed) which pushed me to buy this model rather than the one that had a CD and MD deck. I will never forgive that guy.
• The fact that the Sony was using that god-awful design of angling off all the corners of their low-end equipment, seemingly to make it look more low-end. This is still the only Sony product I have from this generation, and if I could get another model for a reasonable price without this design, it would be gone in a second. Please re-read the fact that 9 out of 10 players for sale are this model.

As this had become my replacement for tapes, it was time to buy a Walkman.



And here is is, the MZ-E25. This is my first Minidisc Walkman, purchased on 3/11/1998 from JB Hi-Fi, Elizabeth Street, Melbourne.



This player was tiny, even for the time, partly based on the fact that it was a player only.



This made it easy to operate too. The recording Walkmans are insanely fiddly to edit with, much easier on the decks with full lettering on the remote, or the later PS/2 keyboard input.



Did anyone in the history of man ever use the AVLS switch? Two levels of Megabass, the second did seem to distort the sound somewhat and was a bit bassy for the headphones I used, which could have actually been the Toshiba HR-M33s! None of these bass boost systems was over as good as the old school Aiwa DSL.

I love the all aluminium shell with the MD Walkman logo embossed into it!



I found the box whilst looking for the battery case for my other Walkman...



...and it still had the original headphones in it, completely untouched! A$323.



I wasn't really a fan of these remote control things, although the design of this one was particularly good.



And the pièce de résistance, a single AA battery, meaning that when I pulled it out 28 year later, I just put in a new battery and it worked! (Note: I did not leave an old battery in it. )

There are a few things that I avoid like the plague when looking at any new equipment these days, those being;

• Non-replaceable batteries. I prefer standard or at least standard sized batteries. Some of the rechargeable ones seem to be becoming a standard, which is good.
• Anything with Android as a base. I have an Android based Walkman that is unusable because the battery lasts about 5 minutes, and even plugged in the antique version of Android means I can no longer download or update apps on it.
• Anything with an OLED screen. I have never had any type of OLED screen, from TVs to any type of portable, not either be delivered with issues or develop them after a few years, ironically usually in the "near black" range where they are supposed to be "perfect". I have even had one fade down to nothing (which is pretty dire when everything is under a menu these days) and I had another ATRAC Walkman where Sony decided to hide the screen behind a super reflective finish, which made it next to impossible to read at the best of times!

Anyway, I did love this player and used it for years travelling to work on the train.

つづく...

 

Cool story! With the right music, this remote control takes on magical properties!

 

I remember editing discs with my Sharp MD-MT180H - hard job ! And i also used it travelling to work every day. The Sharp still makes his job without errors, and i like the MD because of its design. Unfortunally the battery case was lost, and i was able to buy cheap new gumsticks. These, however can not be charged with the device, it`s only to charge NiCd, so i deceided to get a semi-profi charger.

 

Hello Experious,
Wow that is a really nice example and one thing I want to pick up I have had home unit for years and lots of disc's but I never got a portable unit.
Sincerely Richard

 

I wasn't really a big fan of the remotes, however they did mean that the players stayed in you bag and didn't get scratched up. The remote did though! It is also possible it came in it's own bag, I do have a couple of minidisc branded bags too.

 

Part two...

This post is going to be a bit less exciting as I don't actually have the unit anymore and a quick search around the house has yielded no sign that I ever did, no box, no instructions, no receipt, nothing. As such I am not even sure what year I bought it, or why I even did! As such, much of this is more of a vague memory than the absolute truth of the matter.

I must have been doing quite well at this stage as I had upgraded my home minidisc player to a proper square unit in the QS range after the thankful demise of the "cut off corners" design) along with the receiver. For some reason we always get ripped off here as the receiver was also labelled as QS elsewhere but not here in Australia, the same with my tape deck that is labelled as ES in Europe. Did we have a higher standard here for some reason? If we did, that has certainly not so today.


Apologies for the poor photo. If I had enough time on my hands I could recreate the image as I think I still have everything here!

As I mentioned, I am not quite sure why I updated my Walkman, especially as by this stage I had already had enough bad experiences with gumstick batteries that I was fairly wary of them, but upgrade I did.


Photo courtesy of Yahoo JP.

The MZ-R909. This was obviously both an upgrade, and much smaller than my initial unit. The black wart hanging off the bottom was for an additional battery (removeable), plus it had recording (which I never used) and MDLP (which I almost never used). Plus the remote control was backlit and, I had completely forgotten till I saw this picture, the end popped out to control the volume rather than the track skip that it did when it was pushed in. I feel like I might have bought it for my upcoming trip to the UK, although it appears this model was out many years before that, so maybe I was just moving to higher quality stuff? Some pictures show it with a stand that I don't remember at all, but I do remember not liking that multifunction control on the front that made play almost impossible to select, and meant that you had to have the 'hold' control on at all times to avoid random button presses no matter where the unit was! I did like the large display on the recorder itself though.

I (obviously) took this unit with me when I moved to London, but I still don't remember doing any recording on it. The MDLP was handy as a lot of the people I knew used MD so I could borrow their discs, although I remember LP4 being next to unlistenable. It reminds me of listening to poor recordings of Triple J's Hottest 100 on the Tube, and many of the minidiscs I have now still remind me of this era. It kind of ended up being used by my girlfriend at the time and then stayed with her when I eventually returned home. There is much that I don't remember about this Walkman, which might say something about it, but I still wish I had it today.

つづく...

 

QS = Quality Standard ? Nevertheless, the QS - models all have an upscaled quality standard .

 

It was a great level that was a big step up from the big box store stuff without the over the top engineering and price of the ES components of that era that was still peak Sony.