Boomboxes

[vertex]

Noticed you got your bbx from a seller in Montreal. I'm amazed at the number of bbx's for sale on eBay from that city. I picked up both of my JVC's, an RC-828 and an RC-M70, from sellers who were both from there.

[koseltri]

I'm lucky enough to own two of what I consider 'holy grail' boomboxes. I never liked the early-style one piece full-length handle type, I like the later detachable speaker, 'Portable Mini Component System' units. My favorite is the JVC PC-55. For a portable, it's astonishing. First off, it weighs 27 pounds. It has a real power transformer, the LEDs on the front panel don't dim on drum hits. It puts out around 25wpc, and it actually seperates into four pieces, speakers (two-way bass reflex with MDF cabinets), amp/tuner/eq (with weighted tuning wheel), and tape deck. The tuner has two SW bands, and muting on/off switch. It has aux and Phono inputs as well. The tape deck has rotating head reverse, Dolby B & C, programmable music search, mic mixing, 'feather-touch' logic control, and a backlit LCD display with VU, 3-mode counter, graphic tape funtion indicators, sleep timer, memory rewind, etc. I don't have pics right now, but here's the link to the auction:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWN%3AIT&rd=1

The other one I have is the Yamaha PC-8. It's white and blue on black, is 3 piece, again with MDF speaker cabs, auto-reverse, B & C, search, eq, etc. It isn't as feature laden, but sounds nearely as good as the JVC. There's pics of one on pocket calculator show:

http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/boombox/decline4.html

Anyone own either of these back in the day?

Scott

[pustelniakr]

I have a nice JVC RC-717W, that I got when I was in Germany. Super sound, and it was advertised to have a "FULL 6000 milliwatts of Power!"

Rich P

[DecentMan4you]

Originally Posted by pustelniakr

I have a nice JVC RC-717W, that I got when I was in Germany. Super sound, and it was advertised to have a "FULL 6000 milliwatts of Power!"

Rich P

its similar to yours I think

100_2779 17screen
JVC RC M75 W on the fence outside

JVC RC M75 W
100_3405 in th grass front

[jerryjg]

Originally Posted by koseltri

I'm lucky enough to own two of what I consider 'holy grail' boomboxes. I never liked the early-style one piece full-length handle type, I like the later detachable speaker, 'Portable Mini Component System' units. My favorite is the JVC PC-55. For a portable, it's astonishing. First off, it weighs 27 pounds. It has a real power transformer, the LEDs on the front panel don't dim on drum hits. It puts out around 25wpc, and it actually seperates into four pieces, speakers (two-way bass reflex with MDF cabinets), amp/tuner/eq (with weighted tuning wheel), and tape deck. The tuner has two SW bands, and muting on/off switch. It has aux and Phono inputs as well. The tape deck has rotating head reverse, Dolby B & C, programmable music search, mic mixing, 'feather-touch' logic control, and a backlit LCD display with VU, 3-mode counter, graphic tape funtion indicators, sleep timer, memory rewind, etc. I don't have pics right now, but here's the link to the auction:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWN%3AIT&rd=1

The other one I have is the Yamaha PC-8. It's white and blue on black, is 3 piece, again with MDF speaker cabs, auto-reverse, B & C, search, eq, etc. It isn't as feature laden, but sounds nearely as good as the JVC. There's pics of one on pocket calculator show:

http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/boombox/decline4.html

Anyone own either of these back in the day?

Scott

I have one of these type . Mine even has a built in turntable. Not technically a boombox I think though, more like a cross between a boombox and a mini-system., but since it does have the handle, its ok to call it a boombox allright.

[Jeffhs]

I have two boomboxes, both of which have seen better days. The first is a GE-branded unit I bought new in the '80s at a department store, for something like $30 or so. This unit worked well and still works today (I still use it to transfer cassettes to my Winamp mp3 player), except the door over the cassette compartment is broken such that it will not latch, and the eject button on the control panel doesn't work any longer either. The second is a Panasonic which I found in a pile of trash behind my apartment last year. The tape deck and everything else worked fine at the time, although the original batteries had been left in it and had leaked, of course. The boombox worked well on AC, however, until recently when the tape deck gave up; probably just a stretched or broken belt, but I haven't done anything with it yet. Both bboxes are stashed away under my bed, awaiting the day when I feel like working on them again. But since I have a fairly good Radio Shack SCT-11 stereo cassette deck hooked up to my stereo, I'm in no hurry to repair either boombox. One thing that has me baffled is how on earth I'm going to get the Panasonic apart to get at the cassette deck. I have screwdrivers long enough to reach the screws, but somehow I can't get them seated in the screw heads solidly enough to turn them.

Hmmm. If it were not for this setback, I may well have had the Panasonic bb's tape deck working again by now. It's a great-sounding unit and worked very well when the deck was still operating; in fact, it looks as if it is built much more solidly than the GE. However, I think the GE-branded unit is a rebadged offshore-made piece of junk. The General Electric Company we all knew back in the day wouldn't have turned out such shabbily-made equipment with cheap plastic parts, but the old GE based in Schenectady, New York is no more. IMO, the GE logo and name are being recycled on this offshore stuff probably just to keep them from going into the public domain.

BTW: The same GE whose logo appears on my boombox is the parent company of NBC, which probably explains why the programming on that network is, today, nowhere nearly the caliber of the programming put out by the NBC television network when it was owned and operated by RCA. Darn, GE even did away with the NBC radio network and all of its great programming, including the Monitor Beacon (1955-1975)! No, wait a minute, RCA killed Monitor in '75. GE could not care less about radio, which is why it washed its hands of the NBC radio network almost entirely (except for NBC News Radio) after it assumed control of NBC-TV in 1986.

I apologize for the rant, but having liked NBC-TV and radio so well when they were still under RCA's ownership and control (I am almost 52 years old and well remember the NBC peacock, as well as the TV network's great shows, not to mention the Monitor Beacon on NBC radio), I all but see red when I think of what GE and Vivendi have done to this once-proud network. As the expression goes, today's NBC "ain't your father's TV network!" Unfortunately.

[Jeffhs]

I have a 1980s-'90s vintage Panasonic boom box I rescued from the trash area behind my apartment a couple years ago. Don't recall the model number offhand and can't even find the unit -- it's under my bed somewhere, but it's late as I am writing this and I don't want to make a lot of noise trying to find it. The boombox looks to be in pretty good shape; the radio works (the FM antenna is missing), but the single cassette deck doesn't (probably a bad belt). Haven't gotten around to fixing it yet, or at least looking inside to see what might be wrong with the deck. Oh well...one of these days.

[LBPete]

I've had a Panasonic RX-5050 since it was new. It is pretty basic as far as boom boxes go. Just a cassette and tuner. It has line in and out jacks. Here is a LINK to a picture. Sounds pretty good though. It holds 8 D cells and still sounds good.

- Pete

[LBPete]

Here is a Lasonic boombox that just sold on ebay for $810!!! LINK You can buy a lot of very nice audio gear for that kind of cash. Does anyone know if these things were any good? As a side note, where this guys shop is located would be home turf for a ghettoblaster in LA.

- Pete

[vertex]

There are plenty of Lasonics out there, including the 975. But this one is in nicer shape than usual, in that it has both tape doors, all of it's knobs, and both antennas (a rare thing for lasonics). Unfortunately, in terms of judging boombox quality, thats like saying you're dating someone because they have all of their teeth.

Add to the fact that one newbie bidder unnecessarily drove up the price, and you have a record price.

In terms of audio quality, it sounds like @ss, even for a late 80's boombox.

[LBPete]

A newbie bidder cannot drive up the price alone. It takes at least two bidders. In this case it looks like three were involved.

- Pete

[vertex]

All 3 are idiots. That's a $300 bbox, tops.

[superdeez]

I have a pretty cool Toshiba boombox I got shipped from the UK. Looks to be mid- to late-80s vintage with a 240V/50Hz power input, so I can only run it on D-cells. The main thing that attracted me to it was that it is digital tune and wouldn't be set to tune like standard US radios. The set has 4 bands, LW/MW/SW/FM, and actually gets pretty good reception considering its age and the fact that the antenna base is corroded. More than once I've picked up shortwave broadcasts out of Cuba, and the first time I fired it up I picked up a Dutch SW broadcast. Per EU specs, it tunes AM (or Meduim Wave) in 6KHz increments rather than 10KHz but I still can pick up all my AM stations. I find it amusing that I can tune in "666." It tunes FM not only in even and odd number KHz, but in half KHz increments. (IE, rather than the standard US FM stereo that picks up only odd-number frequencies; 99.1, then 99.3, etc, it picks up 99.10, then 99.15, then 99.20, etc.) It has 5 band EQ, and dual cassette decks with dubbing.

It's the best portable radio I've had since my old Mallory. I miss my Mallory.

[2DualsNotEnough]

I found a Panasonic RX-5500,and a Sony CFS-99 pretty cheap locally,and each of them sold for over $300 a piece on the Bay.I think a lot of collectors are just trying to recapture their youth,and preserve something,like vintage audio,that might just get trashed or discarded by people who bought something newer and "better".More power to 'em.
Jimmy

[Rockin' Kat]

I own a little JVC PC100 box. It has detatchable speakers and a detatchable tape deck and it's red. Yummy looking... too bad the tape deck doesn't work real well... it sounds pretty nice for it's size and has shortwave reception... I generally pass up boomboxes if they don't have something that makes them stand out to me.