R.I.P. to Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette tape, who died on March 6th 2021 in the Netherlands at the age of 94. He was an engineer at Philips and was also involved in the emerging Compact Disc technology too.
His GN (Grumpy Northerner) quotient is rising sharply. Obviously crap electronics triggers these episodes. I would avoid anything made by Aiwa, Alba, Bush or Goodmans or any number of own-brand products made on identikit Shenzhen production lines to prevent a recurrence. Otherwise he'll have to move to Yorkshire, where he can be as grumpy as he damn well likes.
@@anonUK Aiwa used to make some pretty good stuff. No idea if they still do. I still have a Sanyo 'walkman-style' portable that sounded pretty good. I haven't listened to it in years. One unique feature was it has a "tuner cassette" You put an AM/FM tuner cassette into the cassette bay and pressed play. The deck had a small cutout in edge of the lid for the tuning wheel. The tuner had contacts that made connection with their mates in the cassette bay so it didn't use the head for radio playback and got power from the unit.
@@greendryerlint It doesn't matter what Aiwa used to produce, now it's a trademark license to be slapped on white-label electronics. It's a similar thing with Grundig in Europe. Some old people think Grundig is still a manufacturer of premium German electronics while in fact it's a trademark license slapped on generic white-label Turkish electronics.
@@Δημήτρης-θ7θ Oh, I'm aware. I learned about this practice when I bought some "Craftsman" screwdrivers and one of them broke in half the first time I used it. It makes me sad when companies sell out like this.
@@greendryerlint Sometimes companies go bankrupt and the liquidators auction the trademarks off, which means the original owners have no say in the matter. But when it comes electronics, it's extra ridiculous because still-alive companies decide to license their trademarks to white-label manufacturers when they exit a segment. For example, Toshiba and Sharp exited the TV market and licensed their trademark to Vestel and Hisense respectively. Anyone who stopped reading Hi-Fi magazines in the early 2010s probably thinks he is getting a good deal on a Toshiba-made TV today, while in fact he is getting a generic Vestel sold under a myriad other "store brands". This is why you have to be extra-careful when buying electronics: For example, Sony, LG and Panasonic could exit the market tomorrow and license their trademark, and you won't know it unless you are reading it on a specialist website. Some Sony TVs are already LG TVs under a different name (which could be a problem if you are a movie buff and don't want a low-contrast IPS panel like the ones LG TVs have).
As a music producer, I use a cheap player and recorder similar to this one as a outboard physical LO-FI "filter." I've found that expensive VSTs cannot replicate the sound of a shitty/worn out cassette player. You really just need the real deal.
I just want to interject, it's really annoying to see non-AV (and even AV folks!) people argue between "real" and virtual effects. At the end of the day it makes far less of a difference for the end listener than you might think. Just use whatever you feel sounds right!
It really is crap like that that give cassettes a bad name. I was listening to a cassette on my good vintage system that a friend just would not believe the music came from a tape - until I showed her.
Yes, if you have a feedback-stabilized (doesn't have to be quartz, can be a FG servo) stationary deck with a flywheel the size of literally a doorknob it is a totally different experience. Even an upper midrange portable cassette player (used one of course, sadly nothing new is good) is much better than most people would expect because of all the shitty ones. But only if it has a new belt that is the right size, parts aren't missing, the motor's magnetic noise doesn't enter the head directly, autoreverse doesn't reverse in the middle of the tape side... It's a shame that portables in general a lot of corners were cut and it is very difficult to get one working half as well as a proper, stationary deck that you can get for $50 or less and just replace a belt in it and some capacitors if anything. Still, a walkman that at least has a brushless motor (those hold speed a bit better even without feedback-based control and produce less EM noise) or some kind of feedback-based speed control, has at least Dolby B (as a lot of pre-recorded cassettes have it and it really inproves the amount of noise) and is of a decent manufacturer (like SONY, AIWA, PANASONIC, maybe JVC, I don't know, never listened to a JVC) wil sound pretty good, more than good enough to listen to (but if you want to digitize more than 3 cassettes, get a used deck, it will save you a lot of time and effort and maybe money to make it sound good). I have a few pre-recorded albums I digitized with an Aiwa walkman that sound as good as the CD apart from a small amount of hiss and wow and flutter, because they were recorded with HX pro and Dolby B,and one even has a few more songs than the CD(Now I probably will digitize them again with the deck I finally bought). It's a shame that there is a lot of crap hardware, both old and new, just as if people didn't give a damn or didn't know it can actually sound A LOT better. It seems that the cassette was a media that was mistreated by people ever since it existed, and then got a very unjustified bad reputation. This is also why most blank tapes aren't metal or chrome, but are ferric. Everyone got the cheapest stuff because they expected it to suck, and suck it would if recorded on a cheap machine they had (and it probably wouldn't have a switch for tape type, so better tapes would actually sound worse and not fully erase if reused, leading some uneducated folk to believe that ferric is best). And because they bought the cheap crap, cheap crap got cheaper and crappier, and the slightly more expensive didn't become affordable, but became more expensive and got extinct instead.
@@krzysztofczarnecki8238 I used to keep decks running as a kid as they mechanically fascinated me, I found I would get so picky about certain tapes that I would adjust the head azimuth just to get the right sound for that specific tape. No one tape ever seemed to be the same or exactly correct in alignment. Only the highest end decks had friendly means of doing this by control panel, but I could only wish they would have added knobs to mechanically adjust this during playback. This is easily the biggest factor of inconsistency between tapes. Sadly metal tapes never really took off outside prerecorded & VHS due to all the bad quality decks not made to record on them. They needed a grading system for decks with capability for type IV tape clearly written on them or assumed for a "gold" deck, I'm sure the recording industry played some kind of role in keeping this stuff expensive, unbeknownst to them the CD-R freight train coming right around the corner. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I too can't stand those cheap decks made of plastic & cheap stamped sheetmetal including the capstan pulley. :)
I was actually thinking, this is why digital is doing so well. There are way fewer places where you can cut corners and it actually affecting playback quality. You don't have a complicated mechanism, fly wheels, motors, read-heads, etc. to worry about being decent quality.
I greatly appreciate the teardown, both due to the curiosity of how they cheaped on the mech, and the catharsis of seeing it left in pieces afterwards, never to hurt our ears again. Thankyou
The music industry could have made self destructing cassettes by adding a magnet where the tape slides over. Like these self destructing DVDs that reacted with oxygen.
that magnet is so weak ... it will take a long time to wipe a tape, plus who will use that so the erase of the tape could be a problem? it is unusable!
I'm reminded of the Coleco Adam Computer from the 80s that used tapes to store programs. The problem was the transformer in the power supply was too close to the tape drive so if you left a tape in it for too long it would wipe the tape. That was just one of many problems the Adam was known for having.
I have a Saisho personal stereo, it's hundreds of times better than this things, in every conceivable way. It looks better, has stereo sound, and it sounds better too.
The wow & flutter was probably meant to be like that. They no doubt used some clever modelling to work out what pattern to build in that would counter the natural movement & vibration should the unit have been worn with the belt clip as the user walked around as clearly intended... sharing their music with the huge looking speaker. ;)
Yeah. I've recorded a lot of music school concerts with a wm-d6c from 1989 with a set of two czech Tesla microphones. I still have the cassettes and that walkman. Still works if I put 4 AA batteries in. Recordings are comparable with current digital ones. I used SA-X cassettes as master tape.
@@eMDeeG Marvin was both paranoid _and_ depressed, among many other things. "Brain the size of a planet" I think he would say, while being told to perform menial tasks, or sacrifice himself. Let us know his exact words once you've finished re-reading. 😎
"Babe could you put the coffee on before you get on your phone?" "But honey, Techmoan's got a new video and you can tell he already hates it just by the title!!"
This is why it's important to find and maintain vintage equipment. I have a Technics SL-J33 turntable and there is nothing made today like it in terms of automatic features (I'm sure its sound quality can be matched with a new turntable.)
I second that, have the same one, and there were quite a few different models made by different brands, just before CD-players hit the market in 1981-83. They are absolutely collectable!
it definitely started as an autoreverse mechanism, all the cogwheels strongly indicate that. it has been crippled to an autoregret mechanism by some lobotomy-like intervention.
I feel sad. I've never been an audiophile, but I do appreciate decent sound reproduction. I miss the days when I was younger and could go down the road, and pick up a new piece of audio equipment (be it a walkman, tape deck, record deck or whatever), have a large choice of available models, and as long as I was willing to pay a little bit more than the basic, know that I'd get decent audio reproduction. I could also be certain that if I paid a little more, the sound would get better. Now days, we seem to lack choice. Most people listen to music via their phone, but the audio circuitry doesn't actually vary much from phone to phone. Tape recorders are seemingly the worst, with seemingly every mechanism from the low end to the high being a clone of a low end 1980s mechanism.
these days you pay more for higher quality compressd audio, and then you can pay more for a higher quality dac/amp for the headphones you paid a little more for :P
Funny thing, only with easy to make products, like walkmans or records players to play those old cassettes or records. I haven‘t seen any video 8 or hi8 playback devices on eBay to playback and digitise those old video8 tapes with granny.
Tape audio is just obsolete, get over it. You can't search, you can't skip, you can't shuffle, you have extremely limited storage. There is a reason people stopped buying ( and thus making) them, something better came along.
I have those mono cassette recorders like my Superscope Storyteller cassette player which was designed for kids, and that was from the 1970’s, my Superscope C101A cassette recorder which was also mono, the My First Sony cassette recorder from 1991 which is a TCM-5100 has two microphone inputs for use as a karaoke or a built-in PA system, and my Audiotronics 148B “Classette” school cassette recorder with a Listening Center feature where you connect up to 4 headphones jacks so kids can listen to read-along books and educational materials while you were in a classroom. That way better than this garbage.
I'm no audiophile, but that really is worthless. Everything about this product sucks and I can imagine most of them end up in a landfill the first day.
Why bother even making it? Pure garbage, I feel bad for the people making them and the people buying them, it truly is the poor people in this world who are victimized
@@absalomdraconis wired phones had much better dynamic range before the exchanges went digital. Digital exchanges used compression which bodges any audio. Wire two wired phones together with a lead-acid battery in parallel and you can hear what the device itself is capable of. (And what using a telephone in the '80s was like)
A product like this would have still required new raw materials, generated pollution during manufacture and transport, only to be discarded within a week or so. There should be some global sustainability law governing what I would term as single use electronics.
I've got one of the auto-reverse models - it's got a static head that outputs in mono, reading only the left channel in one direction and the right channel in the other. Wow and flutter's a bit better than the one in the video, but the frequency response and the rather prominent buzz is still pretty bad.
@@rucker69 I understand that, but this is not the first time he's handled tripe like this and this is the first time I've heard him seem to get mad about it.
@4:22 you mention the antenna or ariel, you are correct! The reason they did not come with one was they would be broken to easily and actually those personal stereos actually integrated the antenna with the cord of the head phones, providing excellent reception. It was not a special headphone the receiving end of the radio was attached to the headphone jack. When you plug in your headphones, the cord acted as an antenna. I sure wish you could have run that over with a steam roller. That would have been more fun.
The nice Jazz Music comes from TrackTribe and is called "Hedge Your Bets" (if someone wonders). If you watched the Video, you know where you can find it.
Funny how technology has "progressed" in 40 years. Back in the 80s a Mono personal stereo would virtually unsellable given thst stereo sound was a given...
No reasonable person would use a tape player as their main music player for modern music. And if you have old tapes you should also have an old player. Its like coming to a car shop in 1940 and complaining that 40 years prior it was way easier to find a new wooden wheel for your horse powered carriage, because everything in stock is for cars and all the wooden wheels for sale are only suitable for transporting something under a ton in weight.
This happens to be my biggest problem with this product. Creating and selling a product which isn't as good as when the technology was abandoned is unacceptable. Not stereo, no autoreverse, no ability to swap direction and no bass boost to name a few. All standard on dirt cheap players. Yet they added features not standard on most personal cassette players such as a built in speaker and an aerial. I haven't done a teardown on the circuit but I am pretty confident both the speaker and the metal aerial hinders the function of the product when earphones are adequate for the aerial (the aerial being a workaround for the bloody speaker! you know because nobody has the earphones in when listening to the radio with the speaker) and just increases price to produce. I think if I was creating this - not only no speaker or aerial - I would drop AM ...and probably the earphones too, the latter to save money. The product appears to have an AM/FM button switch, a radio tuning pot and a tape/radio switch. The latter two (talking from experience) are points of failure and/or interference, so a digital pot with buttons would have been more sensible. I have a few basic FM stereos from China over the years which are tiny that have all this functionality and autoseek. None cost more than 99p delivered, therefore could be included the basic generic circuit within this product without much cost. It is just a shame that manufacturer and retailer motivated by profit more than a decent product.
They made garbage like this back then too. I was in middle school and they put on a fund raiser. We kids had to go sell magazines to our friends and neighbors and as an incentive we would get different levels of crap toys and gadgets for how much we sold. I didnt do much and only got a knock off rubik's cube (that promptly fell apart) but one of my friends got the top prize of a walkman (knock off) It was a complete POS like this one - i believe it even had the antenna like this one.
@@roberte2945 Same goes for poor quality RUclips uploads of old music videos. If you point out how terrible the audio or picture quality is (for example Toto - Rosanna), people will say "That's how music videos were in the '80s." as if it goes with the territory.
I really do love your channel, and your breakdowns that you do.... this definitely is a breakdown before it “breaks down”... Thanks for the great content, I really enjoy! It’s a sign of the times, in a disposable world quality is just not there anymore 😔
This is why people, including me, used to assume cassettes were crap. Even by the time I was of music-listening age (I'm 33) there weren't really high-quality cassette players around anymore.
Companies like Argos complain that the online availability of cheap crap from China is destroying their business, then they go and sell the same crap but with a retail markup. They really should be ashamed of themselves for even trying to pass that thing off as a legitimate product.
There is nothing more pathetic than big retail corporations, who themselves didn't hesitate to push small privately owned shops out of business a few decades ago, complaining about the Internet taking their customers and expecting the public to feel sorry for them. The Internet has lowered the cost of entry into the market, making it possible for anyone to compete without needing big retail contracts. They simply don't like that competition, because they're slowly losing the game and they know it.
Completely agree! Exactly the same thing happen to Maplin. They switched their own-brand products from the better factories in China, to complete tat repackaged. It was exactly the same products you get on ebay direct from china delivered between 99p and £10 marked up to between £10 and £120. All they did was put said products in their own packaging and provided a basic English manual for it. This may have added an extra 25p to the cost to produce. I think Sainsburys will kill off Argos effectively converting it into a Tesco Direct... having some locations in their supermarket to order from but selling everything online from warehouses. So I suspect most of their standalone stores to be victims of the lockdown.
@@disco7379 in the US we have Walmart... Selling televisions straight from China backwaters with old american names like Westinghouse, Zenith, RCA etc. No one even believes they used to be good brands anymore. Now theyve become synonymous with dog sh!t.
To be fair to Argos they were still selling tape Sony Walkmans until 2012. I have researched that. I suspect they would still sell them if Sony still made them, but Sony would rather sell you a £50 MP3 player.
Often I'm not super good at noticing wow and flutter - but yeah I can notice it here. It's kinda amazing that this is even considered acceptable to sell as a product to be honest
Always happy to see a new video, even if it's a last minute one of a very poor device. Thanks for keeping to regular uploads, I appreciate how hard that is and the work you put in.
The audio is so bad that it wraps around into being almost kind of artistic. There's a depressing quality to it that would make for spooky background music.
"It would have to be three times better than that to be considered as complete crap." Wow I really love that phrase! As always, thanks for the video, really enjoyed watching it!
I bought on of these a couple of years ago. When I opened the lid there was a piece of paper inside where someone had written that the Cassette mechanism was broken / not working, so it looks like ARGOS don't even bother to send their faulty returns back but resell them to other mugs. I exchanged it for another one but then returned it after I heard how crap it was.
6:53 I think that voice on the radio says it all. "I'm so excited." With a period at the end of the sentence, not an exclamation mark. By the way I wonder if that horrible wow and flutter is because they used two identical flywheels. Any decent player or recorder that uses more than one flywheel uses different ones, rotating at different speeds, to prevent their resonance frequencies beating each other generating wow and flutter.
Good thing I purchased all those Panasonic, Sony & AIWA Portable Tape Players in 2011. A friend of mine was like: Why do you need so many walkmans? You'll see, I told him, you'll see. Now you see? If you need a brand new portable tape player today, this is what you will get. At least I have an actual tape player(s) if something goes wrong with my existing one. This brand new portable tape players don't even compare to the most simple one from decades ago. I even have a Slim, Full-Logic, Computer-Controlled, Fully Remote Control Compatible Portable Tape Player, which looks more futuristic than today's portable tape players.
Love the hyperbole in this, i dont think ive ever heard Matt say "miserable" and "pathetically" in regards to a machine until this video. Although, i suppose it really isnt hyperbole here.
"The Argos website does still have one old image of an auto-reverse version" The label is in fucking comic sans! Jesus Christ this thing is a disaster!
If that's a photoshop, then the one who did it managed to keep just a tiny sliver of integrity while doing the bad deed he's been forced to. Like, if you think a company would label a single feature in comic sans, yoj kinda deserved it. XD Other than that I don't get why people still get worked up on comic sans. These days there's a WAAAY worse comic-y font that's popular on android.
i once bought a REALLY cheap off brand walkman at walmart back in the day that sounded that bad once, i brought it back! and what was REALLY funny is that when i was there, they were pulling them off the shelves! the fact that they are selling these really shows how much standards have changed over the years :(
Thank you for an entertaining Saturday morning as ever. It's interesting that this is a 'cheap' unit, to be honest I don't consider £19.99 to be cheap. Even for that money I would expect something that can play music. I'm also kind of glad that the last shot is just a pile of bits that will never go back into it's original form, if you hadn't stripped it down I would be suggesting it could be returned, maybe to the street via a window?
To get a really good vintage Walkman your talking £300 to £400 even nowadays. The Sony DC2 model I have typically sells for £500 to £1000. I wouldn’t entertain this modern crap. Most mediocre Sony models, of which there are a few sell for £80 to £100 or more too it’s pretty ridiculous
I dunno, given the complexity involved, the amount of small parts and assembly required I’m staggered you can design, make, package, ship, market and post something like this and still make a profit at twenty quid.
I think the Walkman I got in 1995 (auto reverse, FM/AM radio, actual stereo) was around £30, though with inflation that's more like £60 in today's money. And they were still making millions of them back then, so economies of scale and all that.
Ah, Bush. Back in the 60's my brother and me had a Bush Discassette each. I seem to remember that batteries didn't last long. Sound was awful, but remember that this was before the age of the Walkman. It sort of played 7inch discs, but we used them to play early Led Zep tapes.
I love the remark at about 7:45 "it would have to be 3 times better than that to be considered as complete crap". If I get nothing else from this video, I'll have that expression
The wow-and-flutter on that thing sounds about like when as a kid I tried to replace a capstan drive belt with a rubber band. On some portable decks, the double flywheel was used even in unidirectional decks because it provides anti-rolling. With the poor sound quality that's not likely a factor here though; they probably just kept it to minimize the number of changes between the auto-reverse and unidirectional mechs.
Brilliant and fascinating video! I particularly appreciated the technical approach to testing the "Bush" - testing its frequency range. I love the scientific approach! Really interesting. Many thanks TechMoan! Your video (documentary) is my highlight of the week!
@@visnjamusa9395 - The players probably were. But the tapes back then were so bad that they were unsuitable for music and only suitable for dictation purposes.
Finally a youtube audio review video where its worth listening to the demonstration, the aggressive youtube audio processing represented the unique characteristics of this device perfectly, not something you can say about almost any other device review video
I previously assumed you were narrating over a slide show of photographs, but I can see you faffing around in the reflection on the cassette deck speaker. That's adorable!
@@bitterlemonboy - It's a joke. I was happy and appreciative of all gifts i got for Christmas, Birthdays or whatever. Fucking 'ell mate, get a sense of humor.
I pretty much laughed all the way through this video, you were so downhearted and depressed throughout.....Fantastic entertainment, keep them coming...Loved it.
"Let me plug it into the camera so you can have a miserable experience yourself". That made me laugh out loud! Thank you!
6 days ago? I'm I on CRACK???
I like hearing the pops and clicks of a used record...ding!
@@PerspectiveEngineer Who doesn't?
very dankpods that statement
@@PerturbedButtercup Patrons get early access.
Not a personal stereo, a "personal mono" is hilariously accurate.
More like a Personal Halloway
“It would need to be 3x better than that to be complete crap!!” 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Need this on a T-Shirt!
How many takes did it take before he could say that with a straight face?
i was typing exactly this in comments while i saw you already did
@@richards7909 One review on the Argos website "I would not live without it. It keeps my mind occupied, when doing my daily chores n work" LOL
@@steveleggy It will keep your mind occupied. "how the hell can you make such a crap product??"
R.I.P. to Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette tape, who died on March 6th 2021 in the Netherlands at the age of 94. He was an engineer at Philips and was also involved in the emerging Compact Disc technology too.
*pays respects*
Yes, the Compact Disc format was a collaboration between Phillips and Sony.
God bless him.
🧢
May he rest in peace
Thank gosh he didn't stay alive enough to see this "cassette player"
Kate Bush wrote a song called Wow. This Bush makes every song into wow.
Quite the underrated comment.
Unbelieeeeeeeeeeevable!
I need to wash my ears with glycerine after listening to this Bush
@@puikepuck ayyyy
Bow Wow Wow. C30,C60, C90 Go!
"Bush personal s-
ＭＯＮＯ"
flawless dub on that part.
Straight out of Neil Breen school of editing.
My wife this morning: "Oh, you watching Techno-man again?"
Yes, in my household you are Techno-Man.
It's more awkward to explain that it's Techmoan.
😂
😂😂😂 Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Technoman.
Could be worse
I call him "Tekmo" "An"
"Recorded properly but reproduced pathetically !"
Techmoan's rants of one liners are gathering steam.
His GN (Grumpy Northerner) quotient is rising sharply. Obviously crap electronics triggers these episodes. I would avoid anything made by Aiwa, Alba, Bush or Goodmans or any number of own-brand products made on identikit Shenzhen production lines to prevent a recurrence.
Otherwise he'll have to move to Yorkshire, where he can be as grumpy as he damn well likes.
@@anonUK Aiwa used to make some pretty good stuff. No idea if they still do. I still have a Sanyo 'walkman-style' portable that sounded pretty good. I haven't listened to it in years. One unique feature was it has a "tuner cassette" You put an AM/FM tuner cassette into the cassette bay and pressed play. The deck had a small cutout in edge of the lid for the tuning wheel. The tuner had contacts that made connection with their mates in the cassette bay so it didn't use the head for radio playback and got power from the unit.
@@greendryerlint It doesn't matter what Aiwa used to produce, now it's a trademark license to be slapped on white-label electronics.
It's a similar thing with Grundig in Europe. Some old people think Grundig is still a manufacturer of premium German electronics while in fact it's a trademark license slapped on generic white-label Turkish electronics.
@@Δημήτρης-θ7θ Oh, I'm aware. I learned about this practice when I bought some "Craftsman" screwdrivers and one of them broke in half the first time I used it. It makes me sad when companies sell out like this.
@@greendryerlint Sometimes companies go bankrupt and the liquidators auction the trademarks off, which means the original owners have no say in the matter. But when it comes electronics, it's extra ridiculous because still-alive companies decide to license their trademarks to white-label manufacturers when they exit a segment. For example, Toshiba and Sharp exited the TV market and licensed their trademark to Vestel and Hisense respectively. Anyone who stopped reading Hi-Fi magazines in the early 2010s probably thinks he is getting a good deal on a Toshiba-made TV today, while in fact he is getting a generic Vestel sold under a myriad other "store brands".
This is why you have to be extra-careful when buying electronics: For example, Sony, LG and Panasonic could exit the market tomorrow and license their trademark, and you won't know it unless you are reading it on a specialist website. Some Sony TVs are already LG TVs under a different name (which could be a problem if you are a movie buff and don't want a low-contrast IPS panel like the ones LG TVs have).
As a music producer, I use a cheap player and recorder similar to this one as a outboard physical LO-FI "filter." I've found that expensive VSTs cannot replicate the sound of a shitty/worn out cassette player. You really just need the real deal.
no you dont.
@@olivercharles2930better than a vst
I just want to interject, it's really annoying to see non-AV (and even AV folks!) people argue between "real" and virtual effects. At the end of the day it makes far less of a difference for the end listener than you might think. Just use whatever you feel sounds right!
Yours is now one of the few talking RUclips channels with no distracting background music.
Thank you and long may it remain so.
Amen, I hate how other channels do that.
You've accidentally discovered a machine that turns anything you play into a LowFi chillout RUclips channel.
I thought I was the only one that noticed. This isn't a cassette player, it's a Lo-Fi machine!
yeah I actually want one now to play music softly in the background with
(ChilledCow comes to mind)
Yep, and all you need is to just add a screensaver or idle animation! 😆
I'm sure they fit these to the lifts in some hotels, or on hold music for call centers, playing a loop from a worn out tape!
Bruh, this isn't good enough quality to be lo-fi. Its like... lower-fi.
The lady on the box cover isn’t listening to (mono) music. She’s burning the device in her fire. 19:15
Come on. She has a nice Bush.
And getting high on the fumes.
Looking at the total satisfaction on her face, I'd say, it is burning very well!
Maybe someone is under her, im sure she is not sarisfied because of this shit walkman :)
@@Bruce-vq7ni I died🤣
It really is crap like that that give cassettes a bad name. I was listening to a cassette on my good vintage system that a friend just would not believe the music came from a tape - until I showed her.
Yes, if you have a feedback-stabilized (doesn't have to be quartz, can be a FG servo) stationary deck with a flywheel the size of literally a doorknob it is a totally different experience. Even an upper midrange portable cassette player (used one of course, sadly nothing new is good) is much better than most people would expect because of all the shitty ones. But only if it has a new belt that is the right size, parts aren't missing, the motor's magnetic noise doesn't enter the head directly, autoreverse doesn't reverse in the middle of the tape side... It's a shame that portables in general a lot of corners were cut and it is very difficult to get one working half as well as a proper, stationary deck that you can get for $50 or less and just replace a belt in it and some capacitors if anything. Still, a walkman that at least has a brushless motor (those hold speed a bit better even without feedback-based control and produce less EM noise) or some kind of feedback-based speed control, has at least Dolby B (as a lot of pre-recorded cassettes have it and it really inproves the amount of noise) and is of a decent manufacturer (like SONY, AIWA, PANASONIC, maybe JVC, I don't know, never listened to a JVC) wil sound pretty good, more than good enough to listen to (but if you want to digitize more than 3 cassettes, get a used deck, it will save you a lot of time and effort and maybe money to make it sound good). I have a few pre-recorded albums I digitized with an Aiwa walkman that sound as good as the CD apart from a small amount of hiss and wow and flutter, because they were recorded with HX pro and Dolby B,and one even has a few more songs than the CD(Now I probably will digitize them again with the deck I finally bought). It's a shame that there is a lot of crap hardware, both old and new, just as if people didn't give a damn or didn't know it can actually sound A LOT better. It seems that the cassette was a media that was mistreated by people ever since it existed, and then got a very unjustified bad reputation. This is also why most blank tapes aren't metal or chrome, but are ferric. Everyone got the cheapest stuff because they expected it to suck, and suck it would if recorded on a cheap machine they had (and it probably wouldn't have a switch for tape type, so better tapes would actually sound worse and not fully erase if reused, leading some uneducated folk to believe that ferric is best). And because they bought the cheap crap, cheap crap got cheaper and crappier, and the slightly more expensive didn't become affordable, but became more expensive and got extinct instead.
@@krzysztofczarnecki8238 I used to keep decks running as a kid as they mechanically fascinated me, I found I would get so picky about certain tapes that I would adjust the head azimuth just to get the right sound for that specific tape. No one tape ever seemed to be the same or exactly correct in alignment. Only the highest end decks had friendly means of doing this by control panel, but I could only wish they would have added knobs to mechanically adjust this during playback. This is easily the biggest factor of inconsistency between tapes. Sadly metal tapes never really took off outside prerecorded & VHS due to all the bad quality decks not made to record on them. They needed a grading system for decks with capability for type IV tape clearly written on them or assumed for a "gold" deck, I'm sure the recording industry played some kind of role in keeping this stuff expensive, unbeknownst to them the CD-R freight train coming right around the corner. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I too can't stand those cheap decks made of plastic & cheap stamped sheetmetal including the capstan pulley. :)
Some portables from the late 70s to the mid 80s were VERY good quality. But no one is willing to build decks like that anymore.
I was actually thinking, this is why digital is doing so well. There are way fewer places where you can cut corners and it actually affecting playback quality. You don't have a complicated mechanism, fly wheels, motors, read-heads, etc. to worry about being decent quality.
@@Spillerrec True, but where's the fun in that ;)
This is the first time I’ve heard Techmoan REALLY moan. It was glorious.
What!!
This is the kind of thing that you'd be scared closing it in case it snaps so hard the plastic cracks. Brilliant video as ever. Keep them coming!
"It would have to be three times better than that to be considered as utter crap." That about sums it all up.
I'm not sure he told us how he really felt about it
I burst out laughing when he said that! 🤣
Lou Ottens passed away at 94 - he worked for Phillips and was the originator of the compact cassette.
When he watched this video no doubt...
Not everyone gets to C90 but he did.
@@nowster Oh, that was genius. Well played, Sir, well played.
@@6yjjk Not original to me. Heard it on the radio yesterday.
Obviously a long play.
I greatly appreciate the teardown, both due to the curiosity of how they cheaped on the mech, and the catharsis of seeing it left in pieces afterwards, never to hurt our ears again. Thankyou
The shot at the end with it in pieces was very satisfying.
Not enough. The pieces should be sent to an incineration plant or Sellafield for proper destruction. :)
Every modern tape player cheaps on the mech. Nobody is willing to build 80s quality anymore.
The casing isn't even good enough for a cheap raspberry pi case.
I was genuinely surprised when that cheap unit started playing the tape. I knew it would be bad but I didn’t think it would be THAT bad
I feel that this kind of devices should be banned due to ECO regulations. Straight conversion of resources into garbage.
@@lucasrem what
I can feel the cheapness through the camera. I need a shower after this one.
Yes, the smell of cheap plastic permeates through the screen to my nose.
@@mrbyamile6973 It probably also somehow contains lead and they used PCB-laced oil from old transformers to grease the mechanism..
Sounds like my last attempt at dating via video chat.
i kinda like the lo-fi-ishness but if i was trying to actually listen to music it would be terrible
I remember Chinnyvision reviewing one he found at the supermarket, was pretty much like this one.
It's playing all the right frequencies. But not necessarily in the right order!
I do love your reviews of absolute dogs like this one. More please!
I liked the video where he ran over the horrible boom box with a steamroller.
@@greendryerlint That was a collab between him and The 8-Bit Guy.
Speaker magnet just over the cassette to serve as slow wipe function.
The music industry could have made self destructing cassettes by adding a magnet where the tape slides over. Like these self destructing DVDs that reacted with oxygen.
that magnet is so weak ... it will take a long time to wipe a tape, plus who will use that so the erase of the tape could be a problem? it is unusable!
Probably a shielded mag assembly like old tv’s used to run.
@@ae111black In a device that is so cheap it plays mono?
I'm reminded of the Coleco Adam Computer from the 80s that used tapes to store programs. The problem was the transformer in the power supply was too close to the tape drive so if you left a tape in it for too long it would wipe the tape. That was just one of many problems the Adam was known for having.
The drummer on that proper jazz demo was freakin' good. Thank You for the upload.
Suddenly the dreadful 1980s Saisho walkmans from Dixon’s don’t seem so bad.
Yeah... Matsui come back, all is forgiven!
@@andrewstones2921 don’t know if I’d go that far 😂
Same items with different branding
The ones they used to give as prizes on Bullseye! And Jim Bowen used to say what a marvellous prize!
I have a Saisho personal stereo, it's hundreds of times better than this things, in every conceivable way. It looks better, has stereo sound, and it sounds better too.
Funny how a large amount of wow & flutter turns any relaxing tune into a horror movie/game soundtrack XD
The wow & flutter was probably meant to be like that. They no doubt used some clever modelling to work out what pattern to build in that would counter the natural movement & vibration should the unit have been worn with the belt clip as the user walked around as clearly intended... sharing their music with the huge looking speaker. ;)
Yea this device could be used for music production. There are plugins that people use to make audio sound like that
Everytime the professional walkman comes out I'm impressed with it's quality. It has Such a rich sound. It's junk players that give tapes a bad wrap.
I couldn't agree more.
Yeah. I've recorded a lot of music school concerts with a wm-d6c from 1989 with a set of two czech Tesla microphones. I still have the cassettes and that walkman. Still works if I put 4 AA batteries in. Recordings are comparable with current digital ones.
I used SA-X cassettes as master tape.
Sad fact, the inventor of the cassette, Mr. Lou Ottens died this week, 94y
F
That's both incredibly pertinent and poignant.
They had to use a pencil to wind him into the ground
Just mentioned that in my comment a few minutes ago. I'm a 51yo noise geek and the cassette changed my life.
F
I absolutely love that line! "It would have to be 3 times better than that to be considered as complete crap."
The only personal cassette endorsed by Marvin, the Paranoid Android:
_"Just listen to it. Now you know what the Universe sounds like to me."_
Hi deceth. What are you going to do with the $6.91?
Was Marvin paranoid? I thought he was depressed. Guess it's time to re-read H2G2 again!
@@eMDeeG Marvin was both paranoid _and_ depressed, among many other things. "Brain the size of a planet" I think he would say, while being told to perform menial tasks, or sacrifice himself. Let us know his exact words once you've finished re-reading. 😎
"Babe could you put the coffee on before you get on your phone?"
"But honey, Techmoan's got a new video and you can tell he already hates it just by the title!!"
"It would have to be 3X better than that to be considered complete crap" That is one of the most cutting put-downs I've heard.
Agreed - that one gave me a good chuckle.
Great quote
I like that, on the Auto Reverse model, "Auto Reverse" is in Comic Sans like a bad meme edit
The 5 different fonts in an array of colours helps with that vibe I think
This is why it's important to find and maintain vintage equipment. I have a Technics SL-J33 turntable and there is nothing made today like it in terms of automatic features (I'm sure its sound quality can be matched with a new turntable.)
I second that, have the same one, and there were quite a few different models made by different brands, just before CD-players hit the market in 1981-83. They are absolutely collectable!
it definitely started as an autoreverse mechanism, all the cogwheels strongly indicate that. it has been crippled to an autoregret mechanism by some lobotomy-like intervention.
Ah, so it’s the perfect “lo-fi beat” filter
Exactly what i was thinking. Hahahaha
People pay big money to sound like crap XD (not that lo-fi music is crap, you guys know what i mean)
lofi hh radio is my favorite to run in the evening in background
The horrendous wow & flutter and inconsistent speed make it too bad for anything resembling music, tbh
@@AaronSmart.online Have you ever heard of TOBACCO? He probably has 5 of these synced together in his mixing studio.
I feel sad. I've never been an audiophile, but I do appreciate decent sound reproduction. I miss the days when I was younger and could go down the road, and pick up a new piece of audio equipment (be it a walkman, tape deck, record deck or whatever), have a large choice of available models, and as long as I was willing to pay a little bit more than the basic, know that I'd get decent audio reproduction. I could also be certain that if I paid a little more, the sound would get better.
Now days, we seem to lack choice. Most people listen to music via their phone, but the audio circuitry doesn't actually vary much from phone to phone. Tape recorders are seemingly the worst, with seemingly every mechanism from the low end to the high being a clone of a low end 1980s mechanism.
these days you pay more for higher quality compressd audio, and then you can pay more for a higher quality dac/amp for the headphones you paid a little more for :P
Funny thing, only with easy to make products, like walkmans or records players to play those old cassettes or records. I haven‘t seen any video 8 or hi8 playback devices on eBay to playback and digitise those old video8 tapes with granny.
Tape audio is just obsolete, get over it. You can't search, you can't skip, you can't shuffle, you have extremely limited storage. There is a reason people stopped buying ( and thus making) them, something better came along.
@@Blackadder75 You are on the wrong channel.
@@uphilliceskater I second that.
"It's like a crap clock, in't it?" Strong Withnail vibes there.
'A Clockwork Crap'
WITHNAIL
In his youth, Uncle Monty was probably no stranger to trying to eject in a Bush.
@@nwr99nwr99 i think monty never tried to eject into a bush personally lol.
@@chris9650 In one sense of the word I totally agree. However, I was thinking of him lurking in shrubbery indulging his love of gardening. Lol
Sounds like an old VHS tape of a telly broadcast from the late seventies that's just been found in somebodies attic, and there's mould on the tape.
Recorded in SLP
@PlutoPebbleand microwaved a bit!
"Recreate the sound of Edison's wax cylinder phonograph!"
There are RUclips videos of cylinders being played, and they can sound surprisingly good with the proper equipment.
Loved the "personal mono" at the end!
I have those mono cassette recorders like my Superscope Storyteller cassette player which was designed for kids, and that was from the 1970’s, my Superscope C101A cassette recorder which was also mono, the My First Sony cassette recorder from 1991 which is a TCM-5100 has two microphone inputs for use as a karaoke or a built-in PA system, and my Audiotronics 148B “Classette” school cassette recorder with a Listening Center feature where you connect up to 4 headphones jacks so kids can listen to read-along books and educational materials while you were in a classroom. That way better than this garbage.
I'm no audiophile, but that really is worthless. Everything about this product sucks and I can imagine most of them end up in a landfill the first day.
It sounds like a wired phone in need of a new handset cord.
Why bother even making it? Pure garbage, I feel bad for the people making them and the people buying them, it truly is the poor people in this world who are victimized
@Samson Themighty do you walk around listening to things with one ear covered? lol
@@absalomdraconis wired phones had much better dynamic range before the exchanges went digital.
Digital exchanges used compression which bodges any audio.
Wire two wired phones together with a lead-acid battery in parallel and you can hear what the device itself is capable of. (And what using a telephone in the '80s was like)
A product like this would have still required new raw materials, generated pollution during manufacture and transport, only to be discarded within a week or so. There should be some global sustainability law governing what I would term as single use electronics.
"Take it off", got me bursting out laughing....
I DID A DOUBLE TAKE
Yup :)
Yeah that was hilarious. I was expecting to see more comments about it
Yeah, @18:13 for those who missed it. "Techmoan's Barry White Originals"
Sometimes there is more than a hint of classic Mark and Lard in Mr Techmoan's videos! Excellent.
"It's like a crap clock, isn't it?" Indeed.
Is it a good idea to have the speaker's magnet right up against the tape when it's in the machine?
@@chrisa2735-h3z I’d think probably not
8:00 there is a bit too much music in my tape hissing, could that be turned down?
I am mostly deaf and even I heard the hissing. good god thats bad!
I've got one of the auto-reverse models - it's got a static head that outputs in mono, reading only the left channel in one direction and the right channel in the other. Wow and flutter's a bit better than the one in the video, but the frequency response and the rather prominent buzz is still pretty bad.
I love how he actually sounds angry about how bad this is.
Everyone should be angry about how bad this thing is. It exemplifies a horrible trend in manufacture-to-dumpster products.
@@rucker69 I understand that, but this is not the first time he's handled tripe like this and this is the first time I've heard him seem to get mad about it.
@4:22 you mention the antenna or ariel, you are correct! The reason they did not come with one was they would be broken to easily and actually those personal stereos actually integrated the antenna with the cord of the head phones, providing excellent reception. It was not a special headphone the receiving end of the radio was attached to the headphone jack. When you plug in your headphones, the cord acted as an antenna. I sure wish you could have run that over with a steam roller. That would have been more fun.
"Vyvyan , you bastard! That's my cassette player. My parents bought me that after my O levels!"
"Yeah Rik, by the looks of it you failed them all"
Wow, great "Young Ones" tie-in!
Man, is The Young Ones streaming anywhere?? I used to watch that on Comedy Central, I'd love to see it again.
@@Ravenfellblade there were some episodes here on RUclips...not sure if they are still available?
@@Ravenfellblade only one available I see
ruclips.net/video/0ZPZC12t7Yg/видео.html
That was proper funny as f*ck mate!! 😂
The nice Jazz Music comes from TrackTribe and is called "Hedge Your Bets" (if someone wonders). If you watched the Video, you know where you can find it.
It's a new product that runs like a post apocalypse tape player. An all new metaproduct.
Funny how technology has "progressed" in 40 years. Back in the 80s a Mono personal stereo would virtually unsellable given thst stereo sound was a given...
I feel like nowadays people just assume that cassettes sound like that, so they don't think anything of it.
No reasonable person would use a tape player as their main music player for modern music. And if you have old tapes you should also have an old player. Its like coming to a car shop in 1940 and complaining that 40 years prior it was way easier to find a new wooden wheel for your horse powered carriage, because everything in stock is for cars and all the wooden wheels for sale are only suitable for transporting something under a ton in weight.
This happens to be my biggest problem with this product. Creating and selling a product which isn't as good as when the technology was abandoned is unacceptable. Not stereo, no autoreverse, no ability to swap direction and no bass boost to name a few. All standard on dirt cheap players.
Yet they added features not standard on most personal cassette players such as a built in speaker and an aerial. I haven't done a teardown on the circuit but I am pretty confident both the speaker and the metal aerial hinders the function of the product when earphones are adequate for the aerial (the aerial being a workaround for the bloody speaker! you know because nobody has the earphones in when listening to the radio with the speaker) and just increases price to produce.
I think if I was creating this - not only no speaker or aerial - I would drop AM ...and probably the earphones too, the latter to save money. The product appears to have an AM/FM button switch, a radio tuning pot and a tape/radio switch. The latter two (talking from experience) are points of failure and/or interference, so a digital pot with buttons would have been more sensible. I have a few basic FM stereos from China over the years which are tiny that have all this functionality and autoseek. None cost more than 99p delivered, therefore could be included the basic generic circuit within this product without much cost. It is just a shame that manufacturer and retailer motivated by profit more than a decent product.
They made garbage like this back then too. I was in middle school and they put on a fund raiser. We kids had to go sell magazines to our friends and neighbors and as an incentive we would get different levels of crap toys and gadgets for how much we sold. I didnt do much and only got a knock off rubik's cube (that promptly fell apart) but one of my friends got the top prize of a walkman (knock off) It was a complete POS like this one - i believe it even had the antenna like this one.
@@roberte2945 Same goes for poor quality RUclips uploads of old music videos. If you point out how terrible the audio or picture quality is (for example Toto - Rosanna), people will say "That's how music videos were in the '80s." as if it goes with the territory.
"You know it’s not going to be good, but come on!"
I know it`s going to be good, because it comes from Techmoan.
I really do love your channel, and your breakdowns that you do.... this definitely is a breakdown before it “breaks down”...
Thanks for the great content, I really enjoy!
It’s a sign of the times, in a disposable world quality is just not there anymore 😔
This is why people, including me, used to assume cassettes were crap. Even by the time I was of music-listening age (I'm 33) there weren't really high-quality cassette players around anymore.
Cars from around the turn of the millennium still has pretty good ones generally
Tape can sound quite good especially with good noise reduction, high quality tape, and a decent player.
Companies like Argos complain that the online availability of cheap crap from China is destroying their business, then they go and sell the same crap but with a retail markup. They really should be ashamed of themselves for even trying to pass that thing off as a legitimate product.
There is nothing more pathetic than big retail corporations, who themselves didn't hesitate to push small privately owned shops out of business a few decades ago, complaining about the Internet taking their customers and expecting the public to feel sorry for them. The Internet has lowered the cost of entry into the market, making it possible for anyone to compete without needing big retail contracts. They simply don't like that competition, because they're slowly losing the game and they know it.
The Sports Direct of Tech. Selling rebadged Chinese crap under the marque of dead British brands.
Completely agree! Exactly the same thing happen to Maplin. They switched their own-brand products from the better factories in China, to complete tat repackaged. It was exactly the same products you get on ebay direct from china delivered between 99p and £10 marked up to between £10 and £120. All they did was put said products in their own packaging and provided a basic English manual for it. This may have added an extra 25p to the cost to produce.
I think Sainsburys will kill off Argos effectively converting it into a Tesco Direct... having some locations in their supermarket to order from but selling everything online from warehouses. So I suspect most of their standalone stores to be victims of the lockdown.
@@disco7379 in the US we have Walmart... Selling televisions straight from China backwaters with old american names like Westinghouse, Zenith, RCA etc.
No one even believes they used to be good brands anymore. Now theyve become synonymous with dog sh!t.
To be fair to Argos they were still selling tape Sony Walkmans until 2012. I have researched that. I suspect they would still sell them if Sony still made them, but Sony would rather sell you a £50 MP3 player.
Often I'm not super good at noticing wow and flutter - but yeah I can notice it here. It's kinda amazing that this is even considered acceptable to sell as a product to be honest
9:20 Showing how it SHOULD sound vs how it ACTUALLY sounds, gives us something to look for.
Makes how bad it sounds very clear 👍
Youre enthusiasm is infectious here.
Always happy to see a new video, even if it's a last minute one of a very poor device. Thanks for keeping to regular uploads, I appreciate how hard that is and the work you put in.
"It would have to be three times better than that to be considered as complete crap."
😆😂🤣😱☠️ laughing hard at that joke. Brilliant!
The audio is so bad that it wraps around into being almost kind of artistic. There's a depressing quality to it that would make for spooky background music.
something like this ruclips.net/video/daNEh1ipEeU/видео.html
I can just imagine my mum buying this and thinking all her old tapes have gone bad...
Makes any tape part of the lo-fi genre.
Everywhere At The End Of Time, but it's just your cheap cassette player breaking down.
Its a one step lo-fi machine. All the aesthetic, none of the work!!
"It would have to be three times better than that to be considered as complete crap." Wow I really love that phrase! As always, thanks for the video, really enjoyed watching it!
I bought on of these a couple of years ago. When I opened the lid there was a piece of paper inside where someone had written that the Cassette mechanism was broken / not working, so it looks like ARGOS don't even bother to send their faulty returns back but resell them to other mugs. I exchanged it for another one but then returned it after I heard how crap it was.
7:09 "well that's not going to date this video in the future is it" 🤣
6:53 I think that voice on the radio says it all. "I'm so excited."
With a period at the end of the sentence, not an exclamation mark.
By the way I wonder if that horrible wow and flutter is because they used two identical flywheels. Any decent player or recorder that uses more than one flywheel uses different ones, rotating at different speeds, to prevent their resonance frequencies beating each other generating wow and flutter.
You mean a full stop.
am i the only one that really likes that lo-fi sound that comes with cheap gear? the wow and flutter on that jazz was honestly wonderful
yes
I like it too, I want one of these.
Perfect for a film noir
This machine makes my mid range deck look like a 10,000 dollar audiophile dream LOL! Great Video!
Good thing I purchased all those Panasonic, Sony & AIWA Portable Tape Players in 2011. A friend of mine was like: Why do you need so many walkmans? You'll see, I told him, you'll see. Now you see? If you need a brand new portable tape player today, this is what you will get. At least I have an actual tape player(s) if something goes wrong with my existing one. This brand new portable tape players don't even compare to the most simple one from decades ago. I even have a Slim, Full-Logic, Computer-Controlled, Fully Remote Control Compatible Portable Tape Player, which looks more futuristic than today's portable tape players.
There's still a charm about the compact cassette that makes me feel quite nostalgic.
Love the hyperbole in this, i dont think ive ever heard Matt say "miserable" and "pathetically" in regards to a machine until this video. Although, i suppose it really isnt hyperbole here.
"The Argos website does still have one old image of an auto-reverse version"
The label is in fucking comic sans! Jesus Christ this thing is a disaster!
The most lazy Photoshop job ever... Doh!
If that's a photoshop, then the one who did it managed to keep just a tiny sliver of integrity while doing the bad deed he's been forced to.
Like, if you think a company would label a single feature in comic sans, yoj kinda deserved it. XD
Other than that I don't get why people still get worked up on comic sans. These days there's a WAAAY worse comic-y font that's popular on android.
@@LRM12o8 its just funny tho that they didnt decide to use any other font that would fit better
Package designers: “Haha, this font looks fun. I’ll use it.”
Internet commenters: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”
17:50 "It's like a crap clock, in't it?" - My favorite part.
I bought one of the similar "cassette to USB" models. I was able to digitize 2 tapes before it stopped working. Thank you, China!
Rebrand it as a device that will turn any music on cassette into lo-fi and watch sales skyrocket.
i once bought a REALLY cheap off brand walkman at walmart back in the day that sounded that bad once, i brought it back! and what was REALLY funny is that when i was there, they were pulling them off the shelves! the fact that they are selling these really shows how much standards have changed over the years :(
Label should say: "It'll give you mono!"
Or, we will pay you to take me home.
Love how two of my favourite RUclipsrs reference each other!
Dude kinda flexed when he brought out the professional. One of my dream walkmans right there😍
The last time I heard audio quality that dodgy it was Thomas Edison shouting Mary Had A Little Lamb.
+Cargo_Vroom. Nice one! :-D
While that, when he invented it, was groundbreaking!
That sounded better!
How is that for high?
Thank you for an entertaining Saturday morning as ever. It's interesting that this is a 'cheap' unit, to be honest I don't consider £19.99 to be cheap. Even for that money I would expect something that can play music. I'm also kind of glad that the last shot is just a pile of bits that will never go back into it's original form, if you hadn't stripped it down I would be suggesting it could be returned, maybe to the street via a window?
To get a really good vintage Walkman your talking £300 to £400 even nowadays. The Sony DC2 model I have typically sells for £500 to £1000.
I wouldn’t entertain this modern crap.
Most mediocre Sony models, of which there are a few sell for £80 to £100 or more too it’s pretty ridiculous
I dunno, given the complexity involved, the amount of small parts and assembly required I’m staggered you can design, make, package, ship, market and post something like this and still make a profit at twenty quid.
The Alibaba price is much cheaper. The $$$ is for the branding only...
@@alexm566 kind of reinforces my point though, amazing how cheap something so complex, as bad as it is, can be now.
I think the Walkman I got in 1995 (auto reverse, FM/AM radio, actual stereo) was around £30, though with inflation that's more like £60 in today's money. And they were still making millions of them back then, so economies of scale and all that.
Ah, Bush. Back in the 60's my brother and me had a Bush Discassette each. I seem to remember that batteries didn't last long. Sound was awful, but remember that this was before the age of the Walkman. It sort of played 7inch discs, but we used them to play early Led Zep tapes.
I love the remark at about 7:45 "it would have to be 3 times better than that to be considered as complete crap". If I get nothing else from this video, I'll have that expression
The wow-and-flutter on that thing sounds about like when as a kid I tried to replace a capstan drive belt with a rubber band.
On some portable decks, the double flywheel was used even in unidirectional decks because it provides anti-rolling. With the poor sound quality that's not likely a factor here though; they probably just kept it to minimize the number of changes between the auto-reverse and unidirectional mechs.
Brilliant and fascinating video! I particularly appreciated the technical approach to testing the "Bush" - testing its frequency range. I love the scientific approach! Really interesting. Many thanks TechMoan! Your video (documentary) is my highlight of the week!
it's as they say -- gotta test the bush before shitting on it
There's some letters missing in the BUSH Logo. Specifically 'LL' between the 'U' and 'S' and 'IT' at the end..
The cassette inventor - who recently passed away - is spinning in his grave when listening to this player's quality :D
With less wow & flutter
His goal was to make a dictation format. The early players weren't very good. Over time, innovation brought out the potential of the format.
He may have seen this for sale and lost his will to live..
@@VectraQS I'm quite sure even early players were better than this sh*t.
@@visnjamusa9395 - The players probably were. But the tapes back then were so bad that they were unsuitable for music and only suitable for dictation purposes.
Finally a youtube audio review video where its worth listening to the demonstration, the aggressive youtube audio processing represented the unique characteristics of this device perfectly, not something you can say about almost any other device review video
I previously assumed you were narrating over a slide show of photographs, but I can see you faffing around in the reflection on the cassette deck speaker. That's adorable!
RIP Lou Ottens, inventor of the Compact Cassette.
Wow. That thing is complete junk. How much do they cost in bulk on Alibaba? $2 each?
The underlined “US” in the BUSH logo, probably stands for Utter Shite.
Buy Utter Shite Here
Could be worse, the W. Bush Player.
@@MrMatteNWk I take the fact that he compares it to the Sony WMD very seriously.
@SouseMouse Absolutely fantastic & underrated comment, bravo
I normally don't have an ear to set these bad cassette players from good ones. But my god I could certainly tell this time
"Personal Mono" made me luagh way harder than it should've
When you want a Walkman for Christmas, and open your presents only to see the Bush logo... 😭
"Mom, I want a Walkman."
"We have Walkman at home."
_Walkman at home:_
I got the similarly-named Chinese knockoff, the Wokman.
Deflated was the Christmas understatement 🤣
It's free. What are you complaining about?
@@bitterlemonboy - It's a joke. I was happy and appreciative of all gifts i got for Christmas, Birthdays or whatever. Fucking 'ell mate, get a sense of humor.
‘Auto Reverse’ literally in comic sans. They know they’re trolling.
17.15. I love how this still gets 4 out of 5 on the argos website. Some people must have very low standards when it comes to audio equipment.
Mfrs.' websites are always going to have biased reviews, duh!
You: "I hope to have something a little more deserving of your time".
Us: FEED US MOAR SNARK.
I'm here for Snark-Moan.
I pretty much laughed all the way through this video, you were so downhearted and depressed throughout.....Fantastic entertainment, keep them coming...Loved it.
The chapters are absolutely GOLDEN