I've been scooping up gear the past few weeks in my free time and one of the pieces I grabbed was this Audiologic by Randix Model SC711 Stereo Cassette Player. I vaguely remember seeing a write-up in Popular Mechanics comparing it to some of the other brands nicer units in 1981. https://books.google.com/books?id=t...epage&q=audiologic, popular mechanics&f=false List price was a staggering $160.00 USD back then putting it out of reach for most youngsters. Audiologic has an interesting history and the company is still in business as First Ideas Corporation. http://www.firstideascorp.com/randix_page_1.html Their boomboxes and this personal cassette player all seem to get pretty good reviews, they even have a micro stereo system that I might go after one of these days that looks pretty neat. When the boxes come up for sale they go for good money and might have a few private labeled brothers out there. This unit is pretty nice albeit somewhat large, when I first saw it I was thinking Panasonic or Technics being similar to some of their units. While the unit is made in Japan I haven't opened it up yet to see who manufactured it. It is very solid, the sliding tone and volume are very smooth with nice tight sliding action similar to high end component EQ's. Best of all the buttons are all metal while the case is mostly plastic. It is also heavy and there's a rubbery plastic band around the middle edge with a nice grid pattern on it for protection. There's another nice large piece of rubbery plastic on the bottom so the unit doesn't move around. The biggest disappointment is the eject is not a soft motion, which would have been a nice addition to this unit. Overall I'm fairly impressed I also got a nice faux leather case (which rubbed the top portion). I'm going to keep my eyes open for a box but they tend to be just as rare.
This particular model was also sold as "Music Boy" under the Weston brand. I had the opportunity to buy one (the Weston), but passed in lieu of more a more interesting model, so I can't actually confirm the model number and perhaps the original manufacturer. But it does originally come with a black leatherette case.
Lovery "desktop" design! Walkman for the couch-potatoes? BTW, to make eject as smooth/slow as you like just use a drop of RC car "diff oil" on the hinges or some moving part. I advertise Diff Fluid here
That is how I've learned about this "oil", from my kid! Works well for Philips bboxes cassette opening mechanism, it also saved my Wadia SACD player. Magical stuff!!!
Just to clarify, this quickly pops open when eject is pressed, just a nice tight spring. It works as it should be the fast moving door never seems like quality.
