Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M
Not in person (I may have seen the Highway HiFi once at a car show) but online. There were atleast 3 purpose made car phonos back in the day: the proprietary format Highway HiFi, that philips single play 45 unit you link to and an RCA 45 changer.
Of the 3 the RCA is IMO the most practical. It used standard 45s and could play a stack of roughly 10-20 without human intervention, meaning you didn't have to feed it a new record every 3 min like the Philips and you weren't stuck with non-standard 16RPM discs like the Highway HiFi. Also the RCA was sort of an upside-down automotive spec version of their excellent RP-168 mech so I expect it must have been quite good.
I'd love to get the hardware and compare all 3 but I'd probably have to spend a couple thousand dollars to make that happen or do a LOT more searching for them than I do.
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I worked on one of those years ago! The changer was sort of an RCA 45 design, only mounted upside down. It was a tricky design, but it must've extremely hard on the records, because of the stylus pressure and it played the record upside down.
IIRC, J.C. Whitney sold them and they weren't cheap at the time.