What was your first personal stereo you bought with your own money?

Mine was an Akai PM-R2 £70, I remember working in the summer holidays and it took me 2 weeks pay to get one happy days

Where did you start?

 

This one - Sanyo M-G11



Bought in John Lewis department store in about 1983, where they had about twenty different models for sale. As I already had a Boombox and a Car cassette player I didn't really feel a huge need for a Personal Stereo but everyone else was enthusing about them. The Sanyo had the features I thought were necessary (like rewind) for about £30.

 

I honestly can't remember...I had various ones over the years but I can't remember any of them other than a Sony WM-F1

 

The first personal stereo I bought with my own money was a Sony WM-4 which I purchased in April this year, but I've been using my mum's Sony WM-BF44 since about 2000.

 

Cant remember i have had that many but the first one i ever had bought for me was a blue binatone with a built in speaker, cost £30 from woolworths and the first ever tape i played in her was Thriller....the first ever boombox i had bought for me was an akai pj33 and the first ever tape i played in there was flashdance

the first lp i had bought for me was greece, how sad is that lol

The first ever electronic game i had bought for me was Astro wars, need i go on lol

 

I can't remember exactly the model, but it was an Audiosonic recording walkman, year about 1986-87.

 

I worked a summer job to purchase a Sony WM-800 and a Sharp GF-800Z in 1985. I was very fond of double cassette portables back then.

 

Aiwa HS-G35 was the first walkman i bought and i kept it for one night. When i went to the market next day saw a WM-W800 on display. Probably for the first few minutes hated myself for spending my money on that AIWA. So I walked to the store and asked the guy if i can trade my brand new AIWA with his WM-W800. anyway, It is a long story but i was able to convince the guy to sell his W800 to me in return I gave him my brand new AIWA and the rest of money I had . That W800 walkman was the best gadget i ever had in my life.

 

A summer job here as well

I bought an Aiwa HS-P08. Probably one of the best portable cassette players I've had. At some stage it broke down. I tried to repair it but probably only made it worse....

Then it spend 15 years in a box in the attic and then I ve thrown it away. Together with a clicking Sony DD-II and a Kenwood CP-9 (actually another Aiwa)

So sad....

I would really, really love to get a P08 again. They seem to be impossible that find

 

The first units I had from working over the holidays and Christmas breaks were

Gold wm-24
Red Aiwa HS-p05 MKII
Black Sanyo MGP30

One of the benefits of working for Dixons circa 1986

 

I wonder if you have any good stories about working there.
I'm sure you must have been one of the first to see all the latest stereos.
All through the 1980s and 1990s I couldn't resist going into Dixons if walking past to see what was new.

Although I never bought a Walkman there I did get from there (the first three being presents)

• My first camera - A Prinz 126
• My first calculator - Prinztronic Mini Scientific which came in a really nice presentation box.
• My first Digital Watch - A Casio F100. This was in 1978 when they were still futuristic and before they used a couple in the film "Alien"
• My second calculator - A Casio FX8000 which cost me £30 - more than a weeks wages when I bought it

For months I admired the Akai FD-3L Stereo they had there.
However, I ended up buying a customer return one from Richer Sounds (when they only had two branches and mainly sold returns) for half the £400 Dixons wanted.
That would have been around 1985

 

I was quite late getting into personal tape players and had enough money to buy a good one. It was an Aiwa hs-pl300. The sound was wonderful and it was used daily for about 10 years and then left in a drawer for a couple of years by which time the capacitors had leaked. I rushed out and bought a much later, more expensive and inferior sounding Aiwa just as they were finishing making them and made the switch to a Sony personal CD. That was great. What made all of these machines really special were my beloved Sennheiser headphones. More about them another time.

 

Well as a 15 year old (1985) working at dixons during the Christmas period in the heart of Croydon it was insane. Seeing the first Portable CD was quite a moment. But then the Aiwa's all arrived and just looked so dam amazing!

We also had a lot of Saisho product that was just awful!

Skip forward 5 years and upon graduating I find my self back at Dixons but full time for a spell.
Nicam stereo was the big thing, and Nintendo's latest. But the personal stereo was still doing well despite the rise of the personal CD player. Sadly though, the main focus of the work was to sell store credit, and the directive from head office was sell Store Credit AND extended warranties. The area manager threatened to sack me when I explained that I didn't feel selling credit to people who could not afford that level of risk was "cool". Back then, Dixons group were selling credit to anyone.... literally and very irrespective of their "status".

Later that day, some young rough kid came in and basically helped himself to as many Walkmans as he could carry. So pissed of was I about the managers stance on selling credit, I just watched him take the lot and vanish into the crowd outside.

It was also my first experience of identity theft... bear in mind this is 1990... so no internet, scams or phishing. People would occasionally come in with a bill from the credit company asking why they were being sent letters for credit they had not taken out. It became clear that people were coming in with stolen documentation and applying, successfully and leaving with high value goods.

So all in all, 1985's spell was full of geek out awe and festive wonderment with all the new Aiwa's etc. It was also very social.

1990 was a crap fest, every TV showing Sky News rolling coverage of Gulf War 1, saddams human shield hostages (one of which was the assist manageress's father) and local scum bags trying to rip us of, at the same time as we were aware of the fact that the policy in extended warranties was ripping them of just as bad.

You did ask ;-)

 

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Doublecee

I guess credit and extended warrantees were where the money was being made. Now other firms are raking in more money from PPI mis-selling claims.

I friend of mine said that when he was interested in buying a VCR in Comet that was being sold with "interest free" credit he asked if he could have a discount for paying cash. The salesman told him that wouldn't be possible as Comet were actually paid by the finance company to give out interest free credit ! It was only interest free if you paid the final instalment (which was about 2/3rd of the entire cost) on time. If not you suddenly found yourself paying about 30% APR on the whole purchase price, hence the reason for offering it.

Anyone else in the UK remember Tempo ? Just down the road from where I work is what used to be one (it is now a kitchens and bathrooms place). Part of their demise was selling extended warranties without any kind of financial backing to support them.

 

When I read these stories I feel rather lucky having worked in a specialised HiFi shop. No extended warranty sales, no finance... Just great sounding equipment. B&W, KEF, Mission, Elipson and electronics from Luxman, Yamaha, Cyrus, Quad, Nakamichi, NAD and Arcam. I started there when I was 16 in 1986 (doublecee: 1970 was a great vintage . And continued when I went to university.

Later we went. more up-class with Avalon, Spectral, Thiel, Accuphase and Mark Levinson.

Sadly we didn't sell any portable equipment though...
But I didn't learn to repair and calibrate cassete decks. Man, at some time I did more than 15 cassette deck checks and callibrations on one Saturday of work.
The brothers that ran the shop have tought me a lot! They dragged me to concerts (my first ever: Pink Floyd in 1986).

Sweet memories.

 

My first walkman was a brightly-coloured 'Early Learning Centre' kids unit. God knows what happened to it. I really don't remember it all that well. The first walkman I ever bought was a Sony TCS-430 stereo recorder. Strictly speaking, it isn't a walkman, but its a personal stereo nonetheless. I loved it to bits, literally. The FF and REW gears are stripped!

Henry

 

1970 was indeed a great vintage!

 

The first personal stereo I bought with my own money was a Panasonic RX-SA77. I had earned the money by being a sail monitor during the summer. If I remember correctly I paid it 890 Francs, but I'm not sure anymore about the year, I'd say it was 1986, perhaps 1987? Before that I used a red Fisher PH17 that my mother had offered me as a birthday present, but I didn't like it.

I still find the sound of the RX-SA77 to be of an outstanding quality, being extremely powerful and easy to tweak with the equalizer. The cassette player has good Dolby (B) and bias adjuster (normal/metal-CrO2), though during silents it can be heard that the player makes a slight hiss that the two former settings reduce but don't cancel totally. The wow and flutter are very low, you need to really shake the player to hear it. The FM receiver is incredibly sensitive, it's still really a pleasure nowadays to use this machine to listen to FM stations.

I used it every day during about two years, and then I felt the urge to spend my new money on an Aiwa HS-JX505... I didn't use the Panasonic much after that, and I soon gave it to a friend. I kept fond memories of it though, and as I started collecting personal stereos some years ago I decided to look for one and I bought this one:

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I'm surprised that it seems to be such a rare beast because it really gave a lot for the price, and I would not have expected that we were few to have bought it.