I got far more entertainment out of this video than I did from owning that deck. I'm glad it worked out so well for you, and thanks for the compliments!
Massive props to Jamie, what an incredibly nice gesture. Such a shame that boombox wasnt in a more premium unit, lovely mechanism. Thanks for the video.
@@LongPeter It's important to remember that Mitsubishi Motor Company and Mitsubishi Electric (as well as the many other "Mitsubishi's" affiliated with Mitsubishi Group) are completely different entities and only share a name/logo.
I have the seven-cassette hifi version of this, and it was a royal PITA to get working. It involved 3D printing a replacement gear for one that shattered, and then after a few weeks of off-again on-again troubleshooting when the changer mechanism would fail, realizing that the new belt I had put on had some lubricant on it and was slipping. The mechanism is extremely intolerant of any slippage at any point in it, as the indexer/encoder only "resets" when pulling the draw all the way out mechanically.
OMG l VERY fondly remember my first disc man it was a Sony has fully digital radio. And l remember it costing my mum a week of he wage! The kids at school were so envious . It was in my birthday present!
@@ohroonoko AHHH yes they were the days some kid tried to steal my disc man once in hi school so l was never allowed to take it to school again. Nobody would want it now!
A buddy of mine had one in his Garage... well his fathers garage. HE would load his car working music and just stay out there for hours. I thought it was one of the coolest.
I remember when Sony made a Betamax automatic Tape changer that loaded Betamax tapes one after another. I think it only held 3 extra tapes besides the one already in the recorder. I love your history of Tech Mat. Great video.
You often see one or two on ebay. I've always wanted one but don't have the specific Betamax players they are made for. :P There are currently two on ebay, the Sony AG7 Betastack (for Sony SL-C7) and Sony AG-300 Betastack.
OMG! This looks almost exactly as the fist boombox my mother bought for me back in 1985. It did not have that very cool drawer though but it looked the same and I have always wondered what brand was it. So thanks for saying that on this video. No one in my family really liked music, so at home there used to be a big Technics system that nobody used and they just played radio in it. That until they discovered I was passionate about music, the problem was neither the cassette deck or the turntable worked any more, so they through it away and for a while all I had was AM/FM National small radio, that until my mom gave me this for my 5th birthday so that I could play my only Duran Duran cassette and record music from the radio. To this day this gift is one of the most special things I have ever received as a present.
I must have been living in a cave in the eighties, because I never knew there were ANY cassette changers until I found your channel. I would have gone absolutely bonkers for these kind of things when I was a teenager in the eighties! :D
It was surreal to see this. I used one of these regularly in my college dorm in the late 80s. I had no idea the changer was rare. I checked and actually still have it buried in my garage but it’s been unused for probably 20 years or more.
I had one of those Mitsubishi vertical record decks. It was great but then I switched to CDs and gave it to my brother thinking he'd appreciate it only to find he'd sold it on ebay the following week. Brothers eh?
Stuck in Nagoya in 1961 while his ship was being loaded, my dad bought a small black & silver transistor radio with SW for the cabin. "Oh dear," he thought looking at the brand, "that'll never sell in Europe or America." Mitsubishi.
In college, I bought an example, same make & model, of this boom box 35 years ago. I still have it and it still works. The ability to record several hours of radio with that nifty cassette changer feature was a boon to me back in the day when some radio stations still played both sides of a classic vinyl album with no interruptions. I used 45 minute tapes as each side was enough to record the corresponding content of a vinyl album. CD’s had not taken over quite yet.
I understand your logic, that “why would they put a neat feature like this in an otherwise shitty box?” However, if you just invert that thought, you get “I wonder if we could sell shitty boomboxes by just using this neat feature!”
Good logic there mate!!! Now with the same logic: John Cusack: Firecracker Matt: Tzar Bomba!!! Sorry John. Techmoan: Only creator that can do a flex on a Hollywood actor's boombox and look awesome doing it!!!
@@Great-Documentaries Talking of missing, you didn‘t miss thumbing up your own comment (seconds old, thumbed up? Yeah, right). Anyway, this is basically only selling a mechanical curiosity, the parts, design, suppliers, could be separated from the other boombox-exclusive garbage they probably already were using and had on hand that they KNEW would bomb. So, the markup in producing the odd parts and the money they stood to make whatsoever was largely disassociated with the boombox regardless. They found a way to sell a trinket on a boombox aisle, basically. So what you call "substantial" was the ONLY thing they were even selling. So, stick your snark.
@@Great-Documentaries it was probably a case of none of the other thousands of boom boxes have this feature it will sell for sure. Then became this feature is so expensive we can't afford to actually make the boombox. So we will just reuse the bits from a crappy clock radio so it can be price competitive.
I used to have a small B&W Mitsubishi vacuum-tube driven television...in the late 90s. It took 30 seconds to warm up, it doubled as a space-heater, and it smelled like burnt hair. But it was all I had, so I got a few thousand hours of use out of it.
My parents had a system in their pub in the 80s, which had speakers all round the building. It had an eight cassette autochanger, each one auto reverse. It replaced and even older eight track system. However it very definitely wasn’t portable the cassette decks were arranged in 2 rows of 4, so the thing took up half a tabletop. My brother and I used to have great delight in removing some of the music tapes and replacing them with some of our own heavy metal cassettes or something. So in the middle of the nice peaceful restaurant where everybody was enjoying a meal on a Saturday night you would suddenly hear Iron Maiden, rush, or motorhead. You could alter the relative volume of all the different amplifiers which were in the box with all the cassette players. So you could have loud music in one bar and quiet peaceful relaxing music in another part of the building. You can imagine what fun we have with that! Are used to be a very keen radio listener in those days, I was in my mid teens, and I on one occasion accidentally put a tape full of radio jingles which I’d recorded into the player. That was just mad! Anyway thanks Techmoan for another brilliant video.
When Mitsubishi made audio/video electronics. They were big in home theatre/home cinema systems in the 80s/90s, best known for CRT rear-projections TVs and touted the largest direct-view 35" CRT TV in the late 80s.
@@RealJohnnyDingo Oh yes they did. I have one from 1984 and it's linear stereo, must've been one of the first ones ever with linear stereo. That one at least has a VU-meter and manual level control. And I dig their design, like monolith from 2001... Although reverse-engineering the remote control protocol without a remote control was a PITA. Also fixing the mechanism was one too. I have two Panasonic NV-850s (1985 linear stereo), they make less trouble - but hey, all three work (more or less), so that's that.
I'm going to go against the tide. When a company is so large that it has too many fingers in the pie, everything comes out mediocre. Their cars are just as much of a 'meh' as their other heavy industries ventures.
I used to have a Panasonic boombox with detachable speakers and aux input. It only had a single cassette though. So to copy tapes, I had a pretty high end Panasonic Walkman, tgat I used to connect via its headphone output, to the boombox aux input, and I used to get pretty good results to be fair. I also copied CD's by tye same method, when I eventually bought a CD Discman about a year later, and it sounded great. I used proper bookshelf speakers when it was at home too, and it sounded much much better with those, as opposed to the ones that it came with, Proper bass without the rattly plastic cabinets. That setup served me well for a couple of years, until I bought my first Sony Midi system, an LBT-V102 with seperate CD player CDP-M18, which went on to outlast the rest of the system considerably. Good little CD player that was. There are still a few of those VD players to be found on ebay etc, and tyey must be around 30 years old now. Amazing that they still work.
I love seeing the different ways cassettes were used as multi changers, when i was younger i worked at a supermarket that had a cassette multi changer for the piped music, was pretty basic though, it was litrally like 4 auto reverse car cassette decks in 1 box, worked very reliably though.
Did you know they played the tape backwards ? Something to do with copyrights and public broadcast ! I got a TEAC unit and reversed the wires coming from the playback head so it would play normal cassettes waaaaaaaayyyy back in the day !!! 😉
@@johnwalker194 So the tapes with the backiground music were recorded in reverse and played back in reverse? Presumably this was chart music, as nobody would want to steal crappy muzak?
@@donaloflynn I didn't get any cassettes with the unit unfortunately but when I tried to play a normal cassette it was playing the opposite side ? I can't remember the exact layout but it was auto reverse with a wierd playback head that I reversed the leads onto the soldered pad and it would play the right way on the "other" side of the tape ??? I can only presume this was to prevent normal tapes from being publically broadcast and only special tapes with copyrights paid could be used ???
Thank you @techmoan for reminding me of these. I had one in the mid-90s which I gave (after fixing it) to a friend for his restaurant. Yes, CD's were about at the time but cassettes were two-a-penny as a result. It survived for about 5 years - running up to 12 hours a day, quite amazing really for a supposedly 'portable' device. It easily powered four ceiling speakers giving the diners an interesting selection of background music which would never repeat in the course of 3 courses! One thing I did notice in your video - the cassettes you used for testing the recording function - it looks like they had their record-prevent tabs missing. I would have thought it unlikely that Mitsubishi would omit the 'safety' (for pre-recorded cassettes) feature.
I have watched this channel for some time. I think my take away is that everything really was better back in the 80's, its not just me remembering it that way.
Not better. More interesting and somehow cooler than an MP3 player. Sometimes, I wish, MP3 and the like where never invented. My current car had an cassette player. Somehow cool and annoying at the same time. Of cause, I bought a tape deck and recorded some tapes for the car. Was nice formten time it lasted.
Excellent video! This brings back memories for me as I owned this during the 90's. I purchased mine at a pawn shop as a non working unit, I repaired it and used it for years, it actually has a fairly reliable mechanism. The speakers on mine sounded quite hollow also and I found out that the cloth surround had dried out and become stiff, it may sound crazy but I used a small amount of petroleum jelly on the cloth surround on the speakers and they sounded incredibly better.
While it was ever so brilliant of the American bloke Jamie (sp?) to have repaired this before sending it to you, I have to admit that it has deprived me/us of the pleasure of watching/hearing YOU do the look see/fix up that has become a hallmark of your videos. Humpf - this video was not even long enough to get in my second helping of caffeine/nicotine....... but still very enjoyable/informative...........lol/smile PS Obviously this is a slash/slasher comment.........................
Cunning use of black insulating tape. ;) But, the reveal was epic. :) It just made me focus on how petrified that white cassette symbol looked. lol. :) Also, I just wanted the 'special' light to light up. :) Superb find. :)
I admit... You have one of of the most unique channels I've ever seen. Every piece of old tech you present reminds me of my dad.. He passed away very young and he was a 70's/80's cool and smart "dude" Thank you very much, please keep it up ♥
Thinking back to the substantial fraction of my high school years that were spent driving aimlessly around town listening to cassettes (hey, there wasn't a lot else to do where I grew up), I feel like this mechanism would have been a real game-changer (as it were) in an automotive application.
@@Daijyobanai You keep the logic board, tape deck, and auto switcher but upgrade the power supply, stereo amplifier, speakers, sound insulation (as you mentioned) and a real Bluetooth DAC. Do that for a couple hundred bucks and this boombox would be the ultimate of old and new tech.
I didn't inspect the writing on the front of the machine before the magic happened, so I literally said a heartfelt and borderline Keanu'sk "Woooow!". What a Majestic reveal. This comment has originally contained a whole lot more about the state of Kickstarter projects and the like when it comes to machines capable of playing back Compact Cassettes, but for some reason someone found it so utterly offensive that it disappeared within seconds. My second attempt even used the phrasing "bargain bin quality" instead of the version that contained the name of the actual country from whence crap often cometh. Because a certain platform has proven quite nervous when it comes to mentioning certain countries.
Hello Sir, I did not see a multi tape changer till I subscribed to your channel...I knew about vertical turntable's and even owned a Mitsubishi vertical stereo in the 1990's. Keep up the good work and Stay safe.
9 hours of play? Man. I hope you can convince them to start making these again! I have a bunch of cassette tapes I'd rather not put in a walk-man like device that turns them into MP3's. ION is the brand name of the device, and it is very nice, but it only records one direction, no auto reverse, and it doesn't make one song one track. It's a huge let down and some day I wish to listen to my tapes again. You are an amazing influence to me, and I love your videos very much; often jealous, a little, of the amazing technology you're able to obtain. Best regards!
The first television my family had with a remote control was a rental from Granada Canada which we had from 1985 to around 1987 or 1988 except the Granada-branded remote control had an interesting feature where you could peel off the front revealing that it was just a re-badged Mitsubishi. It wasn't a stereo television (which were just beginning to show up in stores at the time) but it did have clear sound compared to whatever television we had before (probably also a Granada rental). I don't recall ever seeing Mitsubishi portable stereos in the Consumers' Distributing catalogue (very similar to Argos in the UK) but it's possible that we got those in Canada under different branding such as Candle.
@@snowcraft404 In the U.S. it seems Mitsubishi had two-tier's of TV's they sold. One was Mitsubishi, like you see branded here in this video, they tended to be good quality models, and really specialized in the rear projection market, which of course were more premium by simply being a large screen TV. The other was MGA that also used the same three-diamond emblem, (so you knew it was a Mitsubishi) but tended to be more basic TV's with only RF input on the back, (no RCA's) likely non-stereo, adequate quality tube, but not a technology leader by any stretch. But probably was price competitive with the other 21" and 27" tv's on display. Similar to how Goldstar was before they renamed to LG and went up market. Near as I can tell, Mitsubishi has pretty much dropped out of the U.S. television market when they stopped making rear projection TV's. They never seemed to have gotten into the LCD panel market. Their rear projection TV's were always top quality from what I could tell when looking at them compared to others. I think they made some of the largest screen sizes, that no one else was touching at the time.
Yeah, Consumers Distributing had these weird deals with electronic manufacturers where major labels sold their products at cost for large bulk orders. I remember the old Zenith TV we had growing up had a Mitsubishi remote but it was stuck over by a CD's sticker for no reason.
@@MeanBeanKerosene Apparently, according to obscure forum threads I'm reading, you could also get re-branded Mitsubishi electronics in Canada under the Electrohome banner from around 1984 to 1999. I was a bit off with Candle being re-badged Mitsubishi, Candle was a label owned by a company called Jutan International Limited which also owned another brand, Citizen Electronics (not to be confused with the Japanese watch manufacturer that also put out some electronics).
I’m supposed to be finishing a RUclips video myself, but then you come along and post a video on my favourite subject and bang, I’m watching your content. ☺️.
Cassette decks were tricky enough to keep in GWO so I cringe at the thought of a cassette "changer". Got my dad a Sanyo C4 boombox in 1982. Got it back when he passed in 2001. No powerhouse, it has 5.5wpc, a 5 band EQ, AM/FM, phono and aux inputs. Detachable cassette deck too. The speakers ain't half bad. They are 4" vented woofers (-3dB @ 70Hz) and 1.5" tweeters and can be separated 5 feet apart. Still use it as our bedroom hifi. IF, used in small rooms or not played at very loud levels these boomboxes can be quite satisfying music systems. Thanks for another swell video.
I think I saw that once in a magazine many years ago. It seemed like it was the coolest thing ever! However, I now know I had one of the most unique boom boxes around in the mid 80's. It was a Sanyo unit that had detachable stereo side speakers. But what made it unique was the center unit had a AM/FM tuner, a single cassette deck and a fairly large mono speaker that was only active if the side speakers were not hooked up! It was a pretty wild system and I've never seen anything like it again. I really wish I had kept it! I think it got tossed out sometime in the early 90's after I got a fairly cheap all-in-one CD based home stereo in early 90 and by 92-93 had upgraded to a component system with a Sony Dolby Surround receiver, Radio Shack 10 band EQ, Pioneer dual cassette deck, Pioneer 6 disc CD changer, a set of Pioneer house speakers with 15 inch woofers for the front and a pair of small crappy house speakers for the rear "surround" channels. Ahh those were the days! edit: After searching for a while I found it! It was a Sanyo M-9818F in silver! It was a fairly cheap unit that looks much more impressive than it actually was. On the side speakers only the top driver is actually wired up, the tweeter and the bottom driver are fake. When using the radio moving the tuning knob made both the AM & FM dials move at the same time. Also the volume knob is actually 2 knobs of a different sizes stacked one on top of the other. That's how you did the L/R balance and basically required you to use 2 hands to adjust the volumes separately which was a bit of a pain.
Well, we know the tape mechanisms are a bit poor. But we've got some amazing DSP algorithms for noise reduction and so on. I think the price point for something good would be £500 though. Who will pay that?
Mitsubishi Electric making boombox? Nice! I haven't seen on RUclips yet, and you have firstly introduced the Mitsubishi boombox on RUclips. Thanks Techmoan, I'd support you!
6:59 Ok, so my 'Boom box' as a teenager was an old wooden toolbox (cabinet style with two opening 'doors; with metal clasp to lock the doors and a carry handle on top) with a Sony Walkman inside. The Walkman sat on two screws I'd screwed into the back of the cabinet that I slid the belt clip through to keep it in place. I then had a set of cheap wired external speakers glued to the inside of the cabinet doors and plugged into the walkman. It all ran from batteries but seemed to work well enough for me. I then screwed the whole cabinet to the side of my white melamine bedside cabinet so I could listen to my Guns and Roses and Jimi Hendrix cassettes in bed...It looked like Robinson Crusoe built it but it worked ok for me...
Would be interested to see how the performance of the tape mech stands up to your various metrics, as well as the general output (since you can attach your own speakers and all)
A friend of mine back in the '80s had one of those. I was a bit disappointed you didn't take a deeper dive into it. One thing I remember about it was that it had to be perfectly level or the drawer wouldn't function. We had a heck of a time getting it to play on a dodgy picnic table while camping.
This. Got a CT-337 because I needed a basic deck to test-listen to some tapes in my workshop. This thing is a complete piece of junk trimmed to look nice. Everything feels mega plastic-y and nasty, the VU meter is completely useless, it constantly goes out of head alignment (and that's on a non-autoreverse deck!), sometimes the drive mech randomly starts making a squealing noise that I have no idea where it's coming from or how to fix it. It's just nasty through and through. Even 90s Sony decks weren't *that* bad, and those are/were considered junk by most people wanting something decent...
Amusingly our experiences with Mitsubishi and Pioneer changers are absolutely flipped. My Pioneer 6 tape changer from 1992 works an absolute treat and even opening it up to service it was easy and things were well built and sturdy I found. The Mitsubishi changer I owned was a rattly pile of crap honestly, and the drawer would constantly go off kilter and jam, and the tapes would get stuck halfway between the drawer and player.
Mat, that is well cool 👍👍 Never knew those existed, going to have to investigate the Mitsubishi stand alone units now 🙂 Thanks for another great video.
I can completely imagine that music playing at 01:05 is exactly the scene if someone pulled out this trick in the 80s in front of a group of people, all with their mouths wide open in amazement !!
I love how complicated and novel these mechanisms could get to do something that's super simple and mundane to do today digitally. We really take it for granted.
i love these 80’s and 90’s innovative designs , wish more companies would do so again , i know i old but come on , how cool is a 5 cassette boom box???? or a 3 cd changer boombox??
I remember in the late seventies Mitsu made a "statement" type high-end set of audiophile quality component separates that were impressive. The tuner, pre-amp, and power amp had a unique design where there was a way to stack them with the electrical connections being made between them eliminating the usual RCA patch cords.
02:58 You can be pretty sure that in most cases when craftsmanship leaves the building, there's a healthy increase in the salary, bonuses and cheer number of executives. Because what you need is 1 person to row and 7 coxes. And who needs continuity or people with experience when temps exist. Kind of reminds me of how a certain so-called genius from South Africa finds people "exceptional" enough to hire, but often not exceptional enough to keep around after his first temper tantrum. Let's hope his son WD-40 turns out to be less like Steve Jobs.
I used to record multi-hour radio programs on my parents' Philips VR-6870 hi-fi VCR back in the day. Much better setup, it allowed you to record up to 8 hours continuously, which, using top-grade tape, was indistinguishable from a live radio broadcast.
I remember the first time 8-bit guy did it he seemed to stumble as if he didn't expect himself to say it, and then looked ashamed for a second. I was like "Bro you've NEVER said 'as always' that's the Techmoan sign off"
My first VHS video was a Mitsubishi. It cost a lot. The remote had all the normal features but also a separate section you could teach commands from the TV so you only had to have one remote at hand. It was brilliant.
I bet of you pair this with a decent pair of small 2/3 way speakers in wooden boxes it would make a bit of difference. Of course it would no longer be portable but it would be worth it. Plastic just isn't ideal for speakers unless it's a heavy dense plastic.
It's incredibly annoying that Dolby has stopped licensing its noise reduction schemes entirely, so it's not possible to get a new tape deck with Dolby B or C. The great thing about that kind of unit is that you can hook up much better speakers.
Really?? If there was enough money Dolby would find a way imo to fill out some paperwork. Also, there's nothing to stop somebody to implement the noise reduction. They just can't call it "Dolby".
As only one or two companies (Chinese I think ) still produce very low quality cassette mechanisms adding Dolby would surely be like guilding a turd ? Far better to find a good late 1980s or early 1990`s model with Dolby B,C,S whatever and have it serviced. It will likely last far longer and be of a far better build and/or build quality
@@martinlee8907 Exactly. My Sony TC-K611S 3 head deck will play Dolby B, C, and S and is superb quality from 1993. Working ones going for around £150 on ebay.
@@stephenholland5930 Even a good 2 head deck from Aiwa,Sony,Denon- or any of the other decent companies will both record and play back miles better than any of the new stuff put into the new "Teac" decks or new retro look boomboxes
You mentioned that Mitsubishi like to introduce products with innovation. In the late 80s, I had purchased a medium-priced Mitsubishi VCR that had a Faroudja video stabilization circuit. It had the best freeze frame for a consumer-grade VHS player that I had seen. When you hit the pause button you could see it scan a video frame line-by-line and make it Rock Solid stable
Not only the drivers, you need to make proper enclosures. Plus that thing is most likely 5W+5W, so there isn't much to choose from in terms of drivers.
@@drumsmoker731 If you're going to just put it up on a shelf, you can just plug in almost any speakers you like (so long as you don't have a gross impedance mismatch). You might be surprised at how stout 5 watts really is. I have an early 1990s Panasonic boom box; the detachable speakers that it originally had are long gone, but I've connected a pair of inexpensive (secondhand!) Dayton B652s in their stead. Sounds better than I ever imagined it would.
I'm guessing the mechanism was so expensive to develop and produce that they had to put it in the cheapest nastiest box they could for it to be worth selling
Yes. They obviously wanted to sell it on the changer as the must-have feature, so had to compromise a bit on speakers aiming for the sweet spot on price; but then some consumers who were keen for the changer would have been put off by the nothing-special audio performance. It's far from lousy, but still manages to remind you constantly that better is possible. At least there are preamp outputs; so if it still has a decent narrow head gap and a stable motor control circuit for minimal wow and flutter, then it might redeem itself feeding through a better amplifier and speakers.
People who'd want better quality could use their own speakers. I would have bought it for the changer alone, if the deck itself would have been passable.
I also wondered if this was why the rest of the device was a little on the "low rent" side. Maybe they though the target market would be the gadget freak who would buy it for the changer mechanism alone and not care much about the rest of the features. Still, wondering why they didn't also put it in a higher spec. model? Maybe it would have ended up being too costly and not viable for a niche market?
@@Steve-GM0HUU My guess is, they already had some idea how well differently-specified machines tended to sell, and reckoned the best market segment to target first were the ones who just wanted the changer functionality, would be less concerned about performance as long as the price was right. If it had been more popular, then a better-quality model with bigger speakers, a more powerful amp and heavier construction would have been an obvious follow-up. I guess there just weren't enough customers who thought it worth the extra money, especially when single-motor, twin-deck machines which could unpause one deck when the auto-stop fired on the other offered a cheaper solution to the same problem.
I vaguely remember some audio systems with removable portable tape players. Looking around the Internet, there was a GE portable TV/radio with removable microcassette player model 3XM3226X.
@@TonyW79SFV The portable part looked similar to that one. All I remember is that is was gray or silver and I think it had two decks in the front, side-by side and one on top. I think only the top player and maybe one of the front ones actually were renovable, I'm really not sure anymore.
I got far more entertainment out of this video than I did from owning that deck. I'm glad it worked out so well for you, and thanks for the compliments!
Me, seeing the thing open: "oh, neat, it has a storage rack for your cassettes"
Techmoan: "five cassette autochanger"
Me: "Wait, WHAT."
Haha, I thought the same.
He finds the coolest things I never knew existed. I lived through the cassette era and without this video I wouldn't have believed it
MITSUBISHI!
Same.
Ha, I thought the same thing.
The "Ode an die Freude" when the cassette deck opened to show 5 cassettes in there really was a nice touch.
That's pretty damn epic.
A bit of the old Ludwig Van ... flashed back to A Clockwork Orange
It would be a nice hack to put a miniature mp3 player in there, that played that clip whenever anyone pressed the open button.
That was the exact point at which I hit the like button this time
Any 'Die Hard' fans here?
That provoked some heavy-duty LOLs from me. :-D
Massive props to Jamie, what an incredibly nice gesture. Such a shame that boombox wasnt in a more premium unit, lovely mechanism. Thanks for the video.
Nice features but distinctly not premium are what Mitsubishi do best, at least judging by my car and air conditioner. Yes, nice one Jamie :)
@@LongPeter It's important to remember that Mitsubishi Motor Company and Mitsubishi Electric (as well as the many other "Mitsubishi's" affiliated with Mitsubishi Group) are completely different entities and only share a name/logo.
I love everything this man puts on RUclips…. He could talk about dirt and I’d be completely absorbed. Thanks TechMoan!
- Dad, what does "perplexed" mean?
- Oh, perplexed is that feeling you get when you take a closer look at the Mitsubishi TX-L50.
I have the seven-cassette hifi version of this, and it was a royal PITA to get working. It involved 3D printing a replacement gear for one that shattered, and then after a few weeks of off-again on-again troubleshooting when the changer mechanism would fail, realizing that the new belt I had put on had some lubricant on it and was slipping. The mechanism is extremely intolerant of any slippage at any point in it, as the indexer/encoder only "resets" when pulling the draw all the way out mechanically.
Epic geekiness. :)
@@tarstarkusz you can just 3d print a part, polish it up, and mold that. Hell you can 3d print, then injection mold it.
More ketchup.
@@ionstorm66 3d printed partt will always be a much weaker than molded
I bet one of the unexpected benefits of the 5 cassette mechanism is that it's more reliable, because it's not running as close to its design limits.
I owned a Mitsubishi dual-cassette autoreverse “walkman” in the late 80’s. It had two cassette slots positioned back-to-back.
Panasonic and Sony made dual cassette walkmans as well
ruclips.net/video/ntV8gUsbIsk/видео.html
OMG l VERY fondly remember my first disc man it was a Sony has fully digital radio. And l remember it costing my mum a week of he wage! The kids at school were so envious . It was in my birthday present!
@@galegrazutis964 A Discman, headphones and a Case Logic CD wallet were EDC gear in college.
@@ohroonoko AHHH yes they were the days some kid tried to steal my disc man once in hi school so l was never allowed to take it to school again. Nobody would want it now!
Thank you Jamie for giving Techmoan's subscribers the opportunity to see this gem and as usual, thank you Techmoan for a great presentation.
the first boombox ever to incorporate an integrated snack drawer
“You can put your weed in it”
This first comment with an integrated message that you didn't watch the entire video
@@cantpassthebar Uh oh- is somebody feeling grumpy? Is it because you can’t afford a boombox with a pop-tart compartment?
or a grilled cheese sandwich maker! YMM!
@@nslouka90 that’s how you get Hi-Fi sounds.
A buddy of mine had one in his Garage... well his fathers garage. HE would load his car working music and just stay out there for hours. I thought it was one of the coolest.
The thing that caught my attention most in this video was that you have the soundtrack for 8-Bit Guy's "Planet X3" game in there :D
I remember when Sony made a Betamax automatic Tape changer that loaded Betamax tapes one after another. I think it only held 3 extra tapes besides the one already in the recorder. I love your history of Tech Mat. Great video.
I need one! :P
You often see one or two on ebay. I've always wanted one but don't have the specific Betamax players they are made for. :P There are currently two on ebay, the Sony AG7 Betastack (for Sony SL-C7) and Sony AG-300 Betastack.
@@robertsteel3563 No you don't.
@@jeremytravis360 I guess I don't then!
Wow that’s pretty cool and handy for longer movies.
OMG! This looks almost exactly as the fist boombox my mother bought for me back in 1985. It did not have that very cool drawer though but it looked the same and I have always wondered what brand was it. So thanks for saying that on this video.
No one in my family really liked music, so at home there used to be a big Technics system that nobody used and they just played radio in it. That until they discovered I was passionate about music, the problem was neither the cassette deck or the turntable worked any more, so they through it away and for a while all I had was AM/FM National small radio, that until my mom gave me this for my 5th birthday so that I could play my only Duran Duran cassette and record music from the radio. To this day this gift is one of the most special things I have ever received as a present.
Music is the best
I must have been living in a cave in the eighties, because I never knew there were ANY cassette changers until I found your channel.
I would have gone absolutely bonkers for these kind of things when I was a teenager in the eighties! :D
It was surreal to see this. I used one of these regularly in my college dorm in the late 80s. I had no idea the changer was rare. I checked and actually still have it buried in my garage but it’s been unused for probably 20 years or more.
Can't beat a bit of Techmoan with your Saturday morning cuppa
I had one of those Mitsubishi vertical record decks. It was great but then I switched to CDs and gave it to my brother thinking he'd appreciate it only to find he'd sold it on ebay the following week. Brothers eh?
I also purchased one in the early 80's, mine was the X10 model.
For a "3 in 1" system they were very good & well made.
Stuck in Nagoya in 1961 while his ship was being loaded, my dad bought a small black & silver transistor radio with SW for the cabin. "Oh dear," he thought looking at the brand, "that'll never sell in Europe or America." Mitsubishi.
You are confusing it with Matsushita.
In college, I bought an example, same make & model, of this boom box 35 years ago. I still have it and it still works. The ability to record several hours of radio with that nifty cassette changer feature was a boon to me back in the day when some radio stations still played both sides of a classic vinyl album with no interruptions. I used 45 minute tapes as each side was enough to record the corresponding content of a vinyl album. CD’s had not taken over quite yet.
I understand your logic, that “why would they put a neat feature like this in an otherwise shitty box?” However, if you just invert that thought, you get “I wonder if we could sell shitty boomboxes by just using this neat feature!”
Good logic there mate!!! Now with the same logic:
John Cusack: Firecracker
Matt: Tzar Bomba!!! Sorry
John.
Techmoan: Only creator that can do a flex on a Hollywood actor's boombox and look awesome doing it!!!
I want to know if the sound quality can be upgraded merely by using bookshelf speakers from the local thrift store.
@@Great-Documentaries Talking of missing, you didn‘t miss thumbing up your own comment (seconds old, thumbed up? Yeah, right). Anyway, this is basically only selling a mechanical curiosity, the parts, design, suppliers, could be separated from the other boombox-exclusive garbage they probably already were using and had on hand that they KNEW would bomb. So, the markup in producing the odd parts and the money they stood to make whatsoever was largely disassociated with the boombox regardless. They found a way to sell a trinket on a boombox aisle, basically. So what you call "substantial" was the ONLY thing they were even selling. So, stick your snark.
@@mal2ksc yeah I was hoping to hear the tape output out of the aux too!
@@Great-Documentaries it was probably a case of none of the other thousands of boom boxes have this feature it will sell for sure. Then became this feature is so expensive we can't afford to actually make the boombox. So we will just reuse the bits from a crappy clock radio so it can be price competitive.
I used to have a small B&W Mitsubishi vacuum-tube driven television...in the late 90s. It took 30 seconds to warm up, it doubled as a space-heater, and it smelled like burnt hair. But it was all I had, so I got a few thousand hours of use out of it.
My parents had a system in their pub in the 80s, which had speakers all round the building. It had an eight cassette autochanger, each one auto reverse. It replaced and even older eight track system. However it very definitely wasn’t portable the cassette decks were arranged in 2 rows of 4, so the thing took up half a tabletop. My brother and I used to have great delight in removing some of the music tapes and replacing them with some of our own heavy metal cassettes or something. So in the middle of the nice peaceful restaurant where everybody was enjoying a meal on a Saturday night you would suddenly hear Iron Maiden, rush, or motorhead. You could alter the relative volume of all the different amplifiers which were in the box with all the cassette players. So you could have loud music in one bar and quiet peaceful relaxing music in another part of the building. You can imagine what fun we have with that! Are used to be a very keen radio listener in those days, I was in my mid teens, and I on one occasion accidentally put a tape full of radio jingles which I’d recorded into the player. That was just mad! Anyway thanks Techmoan for another brilliant video.
How many beating did it take to stop your antics? FWIW, I wholeheartedly approve of said antics.
4:20 - I imagine someone at a party in the 80s putting their drink in front of this thing as it decides to change cassette tapes…
When Mitsubishi made audio/video electronics. They were big in home theatre/home cinema systems in the 80s/90s, best known for CRT rear-projections TVs and touted the largest direct-view 35" CRT TV in the late 80s.
I have that crt. Console version that weighs 260lb
We have two of those at the arcade museum as a monitor version. They can do PAL composite, RGB and VGA up to (I've been said) 1024x768. Ginormous CRT.
they made sweet vcrs back in the day.
@@RealJohnnyDingo Oh yes they did. I have one from 1984 and it's linear stereo, must've been one of the first ones ever with linear stereo. That one at least has a VU-meter and manual level control.
And I dig their design, like monolith from 2001...
Although reverse-engineering the remote control protocol without a remote control was a PITA. Also fixing the mechanism was one too.
I have two Panasonic NV-850s (1985 linear stereo), they make less trouble - but hey, all three work (more or less), so that's that.
I'm going to go against the tide. When a company is so large that it has too many fingers in the pie, everything comes out mediocre. Their cars are just as much of a 'meh' as their other heavy industries ventures.
I used to have a Panasonic boombox with detachable speakers and aux input. It only had a single cassette though. So to copy tapes, I had a pretty high end Panasonic Walkman, tgat I used to connect via its headphone output, to the boombox aux input, and I used to get pretty good results to be fair. I also copied CD's by tye same method, when I eventually bought a CD Discman about a year later, and it sounded great.
I used proper bookshelf speakers when it was at home too, and it sounded much much better with those, as opposed to the ones that it came with, Proper bass without the rattly plastic cabinets.
That setup served me well for a couple of years, until I bought my first Sony Midi system, an LBT-V102 with seperate CD player CDP-M18, which went on to outlast the rest of the system considerably. Good little CD player that was. There are still a few of those VD players to be found on ebay etc, and tyey must be around 30 years old now. Amazing that they still work.
I love seeing the different ways cassettes were used as multi changers, when i was younger i worked at a supermarket that had a cassette multi changer for the piped music, was pretty basic though, it was litrally like 4 auto reverse car cassette decks in 1 box, worked very reliably though.
Did you know they played the tape backwards ? Something to do with copyrights and public broadcast ! I got a TEAC unit and reversed the wires coming from the playback head so it would play normal cassettes waaaaaaaayyyy back in the day !!! 😉
@@johndododoe1411 maybe ?
@@johnwalker194 So the tapes with the backiground music were recorded in reverse and played back in reverse? Presumably this was chart music, as nobody would want to steal crappy muzak?
@@donaloflynn I didn't get any cassettes with the unit unfortunately but when I tried to play a normal cassette it was playing the opposite side ? I can't remember the exact layout but it was auto reverse with a wierd playback head that I reversed the leads onto the soldered pad and it would play the right way on the "other" side of the tape ??? I can only presume this was to prevent normal tapes from being publically broadcast and only special tapes with copyrights paid could be used ???
It has a real 80s retro look to it
At the party…
“Oi, you! You spilt my drink mate!”
“Nope, that was my Mitsubishi….”
So keep the drinks away from the electronics, for the drinks' sake?
Thank you @techmoan for reminding me of these. I had one in the mid-90s which I gave (after fixing it) to a friend for his restaurant. Yes, CD's were about at the time but cassettes were two-a-penny as a result. It survived for about 5 years - running up to 12 hours a day, quite amazing really for a supposedly 'portable' device. It easily powered four ceiling speakers giving the diners an interesting selection of background music which would never repeat in the course of 3 courses!
One thing I did notice in your video - the cassettes you used for testing the recording function - it looks like they had their record-prevent tabs missing. I would have thought it unlikely that Mitsubishi would omit the 'safety' (for pre-recorded cassettes) feature.
I have watched this channel for some time. I think my take away is that everything really was better back in the 80's, its not just me remembering it that way.
Not better. More interesting and somehow cooler than an MP3 player. Sometimes, I wish, MP3 and the like where never invented. My current car had an cassette player. Somehow cool and annoying at the same time. Of cause, I bought a tape deck and recorded some tapes for the car. Was nice formten time it lasted.
Excellent video! This brings back memories for me as I owned this during the 90's. I purchased mine at a pawn shop as a non working unit, I repaired it and used it for years, it actually has a fairly reliable mechanism. The speakers on mine sounded quite hollow also and I found out that the cloth surround had dried out and become stiff, it may sound crazy but I used a small amount of petroleum jelly on the cloth surround on the speakers and they sounded incredibly better.
Sure enough, you've blown me away again with a device I had no idea existed 😎
I saved for ages as an older teen for one of these. I still have it in the loft somewhere with the the optional turntable too. I loved it so much.
Beethoven's 9th playing as the cassette drawer opened was masterful!
While it was ever so brilliant of the American bloke Jamie (sp?) to have repaired this before sending it to you, I have to admit that it has deprived me/us of the pleasure of watching/hearing YOU do the look see/fix up that has become a hallmark of your videos. Humpf - this video was not even long enough to get in my second helping of caffeine/nicotine....... but still very enjoyable/informative...........lol/smile
PS Obviously this is a slash/slasher comment.........................
Cunning use of black insulating tape. ;) But, the reveal was epic. :) It just made me focus on how petrified that white cassette symbol looked. lol. :) Also, I just wanted the 'special' light to light up. :) Superb find. :)
I admit... You have one of of the most unique channels I've ever seen. Every piece of old tech you present reminds me of my dad.. He passed away very young and he was a 70's/80's cool and smart "dude"
Thank you very much, please keep it up ♥
Thinking back to the substantial fraction of my high school years that were spent driving aimlessly around town listening to cassettes (hey, there wasn't a lot else to do where I grew up), I feel like this mechanism would have been a real game-changer (as it were) in an automotive application.
Such a mechanism existed in form of the *Alpine 7375E*
It even transmitted data between the head-unit and the changer via fiber-optics!
And trying to catch that new song you like off the radio!
I remember setting a tape to record and checking later to see if i got lucky.
Our families first tv was a 1980s Mitsubishi when I was growing up. I still have the instruction manual for it even though the tv has long gone.
Think the amount of innovation they had previously!✨💖
I'm really enjoying these regular uploads, thank you Mat. You could talk about anything and I would find it interesting!
I think you should do a video upgrading this unit to its max potential.
That’d be cool.
yes, retro-mod that boombox, damping in the speaker cabs, um... what else can even be done with a box like that?
@@Daijyobanai You keep the logic board, tape deck, and auto switcher but upgrade the power supply, stereo amplifier, speakers, sound insulation (as you mentioned) and a real Bluetooth DAC. Do that for a couple hundred bucks and this boombox would be the ultimate of old and new tech.
I didn't inspect the writing on the front of the machine before the magic happened, so I literally said a heartfelt and borderline Keanu'sk "Woooow!". What a Majestic reveal.
This comment has originally contained a whole lot more about the state of Kickstarter projects and the like when it comes to machines capable of playing back Compact Cassettes, but for some reason someone found it so utterly offensive that it disappeared within seconds. My second attempt even used the phrasing "bargain bin quality" instead of the version that contained the name of the actual country from whence crap often cometh. Because a certain platform has proven quite nervous when it comes to mentioning certain countries.
Hello Sir,
I did not see a multi tape changer till I subscribed to your channel...I knew about vertical turntable's and even owned a Mitsubishi vertical stereo in the 1990's.
Keep up the good work and Stay safe.
9 hours of play? Man. I hope you can convince them to start making these again! I have a bunch of cassette tapes I'd rather not put in a walk-man like device that turns them into MP3's. ION is the brand name of the device, and it is very nice, but it only records one direction, no auto reverse, and it doesn't make one song one track. It's a huge let down and some day I wish to listen to my tapes again. You are an amazing influence to me, and I love your videos very much; often jealous, a little, of the amazing technology you're able to obtain.
Best regards!
The first television my family had with a remote control was a rental from Granada Canada which we had from 1985 to around 1987 or 1988 except the Granada-branded remote control had an interesting feature where you could peel off the front revealing that it was just a re-badged Mitsubishi. It wasn't a stereo television (which were just beginning to show up in stores at the time) but it did have clear sound compared to whatever television we had before (probably also a Granada rental).
I don't recall ever seeing Mitsubishi portable stereos in the Consumers' Distributing catalogue (very similar to Argos in the UK) but it's possible that we got those in Canada under different branding such as Candle.
@@snowcraft404 In the U.S. it seems Mitsubishi had two-tier's of TV's they sold. One was Mitsubishi, like you see branded here in this video, they tended to be good quality models, and really specialized in the rear projection market, which of course were more premium by simply being a large screen TV. The other was MGA that also used the same three-diamond emblem, (so you knew it was a Mitsubishi) but tended to be more basic TV's with only RF input on the back, (no RCA's) likely non-stereo, adequate quality tube, but not a technology leader by any stretch. But probably was price competitive with the other 21" and 27" tv's on display. Similar to how Goldstar was before they renamed to LG and went up market.
Near as I can tell, Mitsubishi has pretty much dropped out of the U.S. television market when they stopped making rear projection TV's. They never seemed to have gotten into the LCD panel market. Their rear projection TV's were always top quality from what I could tell when looking at them compared to others. I think they made some of the largest screen sizes, that no one else was touching at the time.
Yeah, Consumers Distributing had these weird deals with electronic manufacturers where major labels sold their products at cost for large bulk orders. I remember the old Zenith TV we had growing up had a Mitsubishi remote but it was stuck over by a CD's sticker for no reason.
@@MeanBeanKerosene Apparently, according to obscure forum threads I'm reading, you could also get re-branded Mitsubishi electronics in Canada under the Electrohome banner from around 1984 to 1999. I was a bit off with Candle being re-badged Mitsubishi, Candle was a label owned by a company called Jutan International Limited which also owned another brand, Citizen Electronics (not to be confused with the Japanese watch manufacturer that also put out some electronics).
@@SteveBrandon That's right! You made me remember; it wasn't a CD, it was Candle.
And yeah, rebranding is not a rabbit hole I want to find myself in.
So satisfying to see the multiple tape recording option, thank you for showcasing that.
Cassette tapes are very dear to me thanks to the seventies and eighties! ❤️
I’m supposed to be finishing a RUclips video myself, but then you come along and post a video on my favourite subject and bang, I’m watching your content. ☺️.
bang
content
Thanks for the video. Would have been interesting so see how good the audio quality of the CC mechanism is, using your usual test equipment.
Cassette decks were tricky enough to keep in GWO so I cringe at the thought of a cassette "changer". Got my dad a Sanyo C4 boombox in 1982. Got it back when he passed in 2001. No powerhouse, it has 5.5wpc, a 5 band EQ, AM/FM, phono and aux inputs. Detachable cassette deck too. The speakers ain't half bad. They are 4" vented woofers (-3dB @ 70Hz) and 1.5" tweeters and can be separated 5 feet apart. Still use it as our bedroom hifi. IF, used in small rooms or not played at very loud levels these boomboxes can be quite satisfying music systems. Thanks for another swell video.
I’m sure he could get it to change cassettes in the air if Mr Cusack simply headbutted the switch
oh a verification checkmark
MUST
LIKE
THE
COMMENT
Or just tap the bottom against his head. Haga
I don’t know Mr Cusack? I only know A. Ballsack,
@@Alexander_l322 that's what I like about RUclips's comment section, where else can you discuss Freud and Balsac.
Bit of tape
I think I saw that once in a magazine many years ago. It seemed like it was the coolest thing ever!
However, I now know I had one of the most unique boom boxes around in the mid 80's. It was a Sanyo unit that had detachable stereo side speakers. But what made it unique was the center unit had a AM/FM tuner, a single cassette deck and a fairly large mono speaker that was only active if the side speakers were not hooked up! It was a pretty wild system and I've never seen anything like it again. I really wish I had kept it!
I think it got tossed out sometime in the early 90's after I got a fairly cheap all-in-one CD based home stereo in early 90 and by 92-93 had upgraded to a component system with a Sony Dolby Surround receiver, Radio Shack 10 band EQ, Pioneer dual cassette deck, Pioneer 6 disc CD changer, a set of Pioneer house speakers with 15 inch woofers for the front and a pair of small crappy house speakers for the rear "surround" channels. Ahh those were the days!
edit: After searching for a while I found it! It was a Sanyo M-9818F in silver! It was a fairly cheap unit that looks much more impressive than it actually was. On the side speakers only the top driver is actually wired up, the tweeter and the bottom driver are fake. When using the radio moving the tuning knob made both the AM & FM dials move at the same time. Also the volume knob is actually 2 knobs of a different sizes stacked one on top of the other. That's how you did the L/R balance and basically required you to use 2 hands to adjust the volumes separately which was a bit of a pain.
With the technology available today (batteries, processing power, etc) it's perplexing that nobody has bothered to create the 'ultimate' boom-box. 🤔
Well, we know the tape mechanisms are a bit poor. But we've got some amazing DSP algorithms for noise reduction and so on. I think the price point for something good would be £500 though. Who will pay that?
With so many people having smartphones, todays boomboxes are bluetooth speakers.
Because the problem tape solved, distributing low to medium fidelity music is now solved by streaming.
JBL boombox.
Mitsubishi Electric making boombox? Nice! I haven't seen on RUclips yet, and you have firstly introduced the Mitsubishi boombox on RUclips. Thanks Techmoan, I'd support you!
I was surprised by the changer and amazed by how it was presented. Thank you 👍
6:59 Ok, so my 'Boom box' as a teenager was an old wooden toolbox (cabinet style with two opening 'doors; with metal clasp to lock the doors and a carry handle on top) with a Sony Walkman inside. The Walkman sat on two screws I'd screwed into the back of the cabinet that I slid the belt clip through to keep it in place. I then had a set of cheap wired external speakers glued to the inside of the cabinet doors and plugged into the walkman. It all ran from batteries but seemed to work well enough for me. I then screwed the whole cabinet to the side of my white melamine bedside cabinet so I could listen to my Guns and Roses and Jimi Hendrix cassettes in bed...It looked like Robinson Crusoe built it but it worked ok for me...
Never even knew these ever existed… thanks for the vid as always
Love watching these with my morning coffee! Thanks for all you do!
We see that Planet X3 cassette. For those who don't know that's a retro game for 8 bit computers.
1:25 Nice shot of the Planet X3 Sound track from 8-Bit Guy. Great game and soundtrack :)
Would be interested to see how the performance of the tape mech stands up to your various metrics, as well as the general output (since you can attach your own speakers and all)
A friend of mine back in the '80s had one of those. I was a bit disappointed you didn't take a deeper dive into it. One thing I remember about it was that it had to be perfectly level or the drawer wouldn't function. We had a heck of a time getting it to play on a dodgy picnic table while camping.
My experience with Pioneer equipment was the same. The stuff made in the 80's was built like a tank. Afterwards, not so much.
This. Got a CT-337 because I needed a basic deck to test-listen to some tapes in my workshop. This thing is a complete piece of junk trimmed to look nice. Everything feels mega plastic-y and nasty, the VU meter is completely useless, it constantly goes out of head alignment (and that's on a non-autoreverse deck!), sometimes the drive mech randomly starts making a squealing noise that I have no idea where it's coming from or how to fix it. It's just nasty through and through. Even 90s Sony decks weren't *that* bad, and those are/were considered junk by most people wanting something decent...
The chosen music is just dramaturgically perfect- hilarious! Also interesting as always!
Finally. Another Boombox. Yeah.
I worked on the 7 tape changers. Major microcontroller circuits. They were quite reliable but when they gave trouble, it was often expensive trouble
Noticed the stealth advertising for the 8-bit Guy. Nice.
I caught that too!
@@iocat I must've missed that one :_(
@@DaveFlash One of the cassettes is Planet X-3
"nice"
Oooohhhaaaaaaaaaa !! What a piece o Tech ! Thanks for finding and sharing this wih us !
Amusingly our experiences with Mitsubishi and Pioneer changers are absolutely flipped. My Pioneer 6 tape changer from 1992 works an absolute treat and even opening it up to service it was easy and things were well built and sturdy I found. The Mitsubishi changer I owned was a rattly pile of crap honestly, and the drawer would constantly go off kilter and jam, and the tapes would get stuck halfway between the drawer and player.
This has got to be the most 80's looking boombox i've ever seen.. and I had boomboxes in the 80's. 😀
Mat, that is well cool 👍👍 Never knew those existed, going to have to investigate the Mitsubishi stand alone units now 🙂 Thanks for another great video.
I can completely imagine that music playing at 01:05 is exactly the scene if someone pulled out this trick in the 80s in front of a group of people, all with their mouths wide open in amazement !!
"Cassette to Joy" made me LOL!
I love how complicated and novel these mechanisms could get to do something that's super simple and mundane to do today digitally. We really take it for granted.
i love these 80’s and 90’s innovative designs , wish more companies would do so again , i know i old but come on , how cool is a 5 cassette boom box???? or a 3 cd changer boombox??
I guess now we have such large capacity storage that you don't need changers. Imagine an SD card changer :)
Its 80s design
@@松本リョウ-g3e good point , edited , thanks
There is nothing more to innovate then spec number . You can have audio system with 1tb memory and abillity to play games. Its called pc.
@@hamshackleton yeah but it is a boombox?
I remember in the late seventies Mitsu made a "statement" type high-end set of audiophile quality component separates that were impressive. The tuner, pre-amp, and power amp had a unique design where there was a way to stack them with the electrical connections being made between them eliminating the usual RCA patch cords.
02:58 You can be pretty sure that in most cases when craftsmanship leaves the building, there's a healthy increase in the salary, bonuses and cheer number of executives. Because what you need is 1 person to row and 7 coxes. And who needs continuity or people with experience when temps exist. Kind of reminds me of how a certain so-called genius from South Africa finds people "exceptional" enough to hire, but often not exceptional enough to keep around after his first temper tantrum. Let's hope his son WD-40 turns out to be less like Steve Jobs.
Hahaha nice turn of phrase
"WD-40" thanks lol.
Soon to be called "The Son Formerly Known as WD-40."
OH MY GOD! Where's this mechanism been all my life, I NEEEED that multi-changer!
I was really hoping to see inside this one, get a better look at the changing mechanism.
I used to record multi-hour radio programs on my parents' Philips VR-6870 hi-fi VCR back in the day. Much better setup, it allowed you to record up to 8 hours continuously, which, using top-grade tape, was indistinguishable from a live radio broadcast.
Does it sound any better with different speakers attached?
As an 80's kid I would have been stunned with that :D Very cool
I like that it has dolby noise reduction.
vinto34 ... like we can hear the tape hiss on the cheesy speakers in the first place?
@@rupe53 Buy a higher end Boom box with better speakers then.
Like clockwork. Brightening my weekend yet again.
I noticed that 8-Bit Guy and LGR both now sign off with "As always, thanks for watching"
It's quite a common phrase on YT. First one I noticed using it was Vsauce and I thought Techmoan must be an associated channel.
I remember the first time 8-bit guy did it he seemed to stumble as if he didn't expect himself to say it, and then looked ashamed for a second.
I was like "Bro you've NEVER said 'as always' that's the Techmoan sign off"
Speaking of the 8-Bit Guy, I happened to notice the Planet X3 soundtrack in the changer at 1:12.
My first VHS video was a Mitsubishi. It cost a lot. The remote had all the normal features but also a separate section you could teach commands from the TV so you only had to have one remote at hand. It was brilliant.
I bet of you pair this with a decent pair of small 2/3 way speakers in wooden boxes it would make a bit of difference. Of course it would no longer be portable but it would be worth it. Plastic just isn't ideal for speakers unless it's a heavy dense plastic.
Glorious music with the "ta da!" at the end! I fell out of my chair!
It's incredibly annoying that Dolby has stopped licensing its noise reduction schemes entirely, so it's not possible to get a new tape deck with Dolby B or C.
The great thing about that kind of unit is that you can hook up much better speakers.
Really?? If there was enough money Dolby would find a way imo to fill out some paperwork. Also, there's nothing to stop somebody to implement the noise reduction. They just can't call it "Dolby".
As only one or two companies (Chinese I think ) still produce very low quality cassette mechanisms adding Dolby would surely be like guilding a turd ?
Far better to find a good late 1980s or early 1990`s model with Dolby B,C,S whatever and have it serviced.
It will likely last far longer and be of a far better build and/or build quality
@@martinlee8907 Exactly. My Sony TC-K611S 3 head deck will play Dolby B, C, and S and is superb quality from 1993. Working ones going for around £150 on ebay.
@@stephenholland5930 Even a good 2 head deck from Aiwa,Sony,Denon- or any of the other decent companies will both record and play back miles better than any of the new stuff put into the new "Teac" decks or new retro look boomboxes
You mentioned that Mitsubishi like to introduce products with innovation. In the late 80s, I had purchased a medium-priced Mitsubishi VCR that had a Faroudja video stabilization circuit.
It had the best freeze frame for a consumer-grade VHS player that I had seen. When you hit the pause button you could see it scan a video frame line-by-line and make it Rock Solid stable
Fascinating. /Spock
I highly suspect upgrading the speaker drivers on a unit like this would improve the sound dramatically.
Not only the drivers, you need to make proper enclosures. Plus that thing is most likely 5W+5W, so there isn't much to choose from in terms of drivers.
I had a similar thought regarding (almost certainly electrolytic and degraded) capacitors.
@@drumsmoker731 If you're going to just put it up on a shelf, you can just plug in almost any speakers you like (so long as you don't have a gross impedance mismatch). You might be surprised at how stout 5 watts really is.
I have an early 1990s Panasonic boom box; the detachable speakers that it originally had are long gone, but I've connected a pair of inexpensive (secondhand!) Dayton B652s in their stead. Sounds better than I ever imagined it would.
I'm building a vintage rack system, and I want something like that for sure! Great video!
I'm guessing the mechanism was so expensive to develop and produce that they had to put it in the cheapest nastiest box they could for it to be worth selling
Yes. They obviously wanted to sell it on the changer as the must-have feature, so had to compromise a bit on speakers aiming for the sweet spot on price; but then some consumers who were keen for the changer would have been put off by the nothing-special audio performance. It's far from lousy, but still manages to remind you constantly that better is possible. At least there are preamp outputs; so if it still has a decent narrow head gap and a stable motor control circuit for minimal wow and flutter, then it might redeem itself feeding through a better amplifier and speakers.
People who'd want better quality could use their own speakers. I would have bought it for the changer alone, if the deck itself would have been passable.
I also wondered if this was why the rest of the device was a little on the "low rent" side. Maybe they though the target market would be the gadget freak who would buy it for the changer mechanism alone and not care much about the rest of the features. Still, wondering why they didn't also put it in a higher spec. model? Maybe it would have ended up being too costly and not viable for a niche market?
@@Steve-GM0HUU My guess is, they already had some idea how well differently-specified machines tended to sell, and reckoned the best market segment to target first were the ones who just wanted the changer functionality, would be less concerned about performance as long as the price was right. If it had been more popular, then a better-quality model with bigger speakers, a more powerful amp and heavier construction would have been an obvious follow-up.
I guess there just weren't enough customers who thought it worth the extra money, especially when single-motor, twin-deck machines which could unpause one deck when the auto-stop fired on the other offered a cheaper solution to the same problem.
I love his videos...i miss electronics from the 1990s-2000.
They were jealous of CD trays being used as cup holders…
So how do you ‘one up’ that ?
A sandwich rack!
Superb little cameo there by the Planet X3 soundtrack cassette!
I wish I kept my dad's boombox, the cassette mechanisms were detachable "walkmen", no clue what brand or model it was though
I vaguely remember some audio systems with removable portable tape players. Looking around the Internet, there was a GE portable TV/radio with removable microcassette player model 3XM3226X.
@@TonyW79SFV The portable part looked similar to that one. All I remember is that is was gray or silver and I think it had two decks in the front, side-by side and one on top. I think only the top player and maybe one of the front ones actually were renovable, I'm really not sure anymore.
I recall seeing one in a shop window as a kid that was branded as amstrad/ Schneider
Man, the Ode To Joy playing when the tray was opening and closing gave me a laugh I needed so much today. Thanks for another great video.