Boombox Suggestions
InnerSpace
443 Posts
Because I don't want to listen to my cassettes any other way.
InnerSpace
443 Posts
Comments
last time went to tokyo, I came to this very narrow ally by mistake. There i found this store full of really seriously cool vintage boomboxes. Strange logging guy working there, strange in a nice way, like 4 teeth and really exited about his boomboxes. To bad the one he sold where way out of my budget.
now I'm looking for something good just for bringing to this summers chilling sessions and barbecues in the park. maybe im getting the ipod boombox - Lasonic I931 to at least get some boombox feeling. a cassette one would be great tho
but I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find one in good shape for less than $1000
I have this one:
which bangs pretty good and I think may actually be bigger than the Conion. The best part about this one is it has an aux input so you can play pretty much anything through it!
The vintage game can be tough as they have been in demand for a minute and also these boxes are getting up there in age. Parts are hard to come by and a lot of them weren't built that solidly to begin with. That said, hit thy church sales/ swap meets and you may well come up.
fro some reason boomboxes seem to be very popular in Russia..they know the deal.
Thanks! I would love a Conion, but I know my limits!
Joe
from my experience theres not really one brand that is guaranteed to work any better than any other brand, but they were all built relatively well. im consistently surprised how often the chintzier-feeling boxes seem to work totally fine still while some of the higher-end stuff seems to almost always have some fault.
panasonic is one of my favorite electronics companies all around, and most of their stuff was super solid back then. sharp made some great stuff too. that lasonic stuff is really plasticy but generally they sound pretty good. although usually better through the aux-in than with a cassette. i have an 80s model TRC-931 and it sounds pretty great when running an auxilary source through it. JVC made some ultra high end stuff but they were big fans of the multi-piece box. the rc90 or whatever the box on LL's Radio album is called is a pretty impressive unit. im getting rusty with this shit, kinda fell out of it.
basically just because a boombox was made by some no-name company doesnt mean it will necessarily be any less reliable or worse-sounding than a box made by some huge corporation. i'd say MOST of the iconic boxes were made by lesser-known companies just trying to cash in on making the hugest boom box they could. nobody would even know what Lasonic or Rising or Conion/Clairtone/Helix was today if it werent for their boomboxes.
theyre still out there every once in a while but definitely drying up. i used to buy every single 80s one-piece box i'd find and its slowed down so much, last time i even saw one that i would have considered buying out in the wild was probably 9 months ago at least. 80s boxes are still pretty common, but theyre usually mid-late 80s 3-pieces or super small low-end one-piecers, which frankly arent as exciting (unless they happen to have lots of features, a general sign of quality)
with a budget of $300 or less, youll definitely be able to find something good. hell, when i got my TRC-931 they were still anywhere from $2-500, now they can be had on ebay for less than a hundred, most likely due to that ipod reissue.
thats a clone of a box that Crown made, several other re-badges too, all with various graphics changes/feature differences. i personally wouldnt pay more than $150 for that thing...but who knows. i go off quality, looks, features, size more than rarity/desirability. that might be rare enough that its WORTH that much.
in boomboxes theres a few levels of quality: super high-end, good, plasticy/cheap, and ultra-shitty plasticy cheap. i'd probably rate this thing close to the bottom quality wise. sub-lasonic. thats not to say it wouldnt do everything youd want it to, but for the most part, when "disco lights" (like on those speaker cones), and fake tweeters are involved i start to get a little sketched out about the build quality. its like "hell, we're building this thing SO cheaply, we got money left over so why not put stupid flashing lights all over it?"
conion/clairtone/helix were basically all the same company. i dont know the story with helix, but clairtone was basically the canadian distributor for conion. the C100 (that huge box everybody wants) is available under all 3 different brandings.
conion made some other boxes that are just as big but not QUITE as sought-after, although still probably pretty close to the same price range. the box i'd advise you to get is the one that you like the looks of best, and that is advertised to work the best.
MAKE SURE THEY PACK IT WELL. i can not stress this enough. mention it if you win an auction. ive heard mountains of horror stories from people that get a boombox in the mail and the corners are poking out of the package, or a huge chunk of plastic is broken off in transit, or some of the internal components get jarred out of place and break inside the unit. these things really werent built to be tossed around.
http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/boombox/
One of favorite boomboxes is the Sharp GF-777 and when in nice condition can range from $300-500.
also you can get the "boombox database" from them, which is a cd-rom with just about every single boombox known to man. there are different versions too, he updates it on a fairly regular basis as more models are discovered.
Dude, thanks for the load of info! I will check it all out.
SHARP VZ-2500