Just found this from 1970, that looks like an AIWA TPR-101! I think Puerto Rican Dollars are the same as USD.
From December 1970, a neat National advertised as a car stereo but obviously it does double duty, it even has a recording mic, pretty cool!
I got lucky and finally found a USA Grundig CZ01-FM and this is very early with it's rotary selection switch, the one to the right of the radio dial with the black knob. The button in the middle is record, there's two buttons in front of the two rotory marked "RADIO" and it looks like the rotary are for volume and maybe "balance" with an accessory speaker? My camera picks up a lot of smudges, the unit looks great except for the missing badge on the front. There's two buttons on the bottom to release the back cover for battery access, the flywheel on this is around 3" in diameter! Of course I love the big antenna that retracts into the body and the tiny level meter next to the record button. Oddly there's an edge connector on the bottom, anybody have any idea what that is for? It has multiple connections so I don't think it's for a rechargeable battery.
Nice one, great score! Its a very early boombox. I thought it was from around 1969. I had one once too. A Grundig C201-FM. I tried to get it working again, but unfortunately, I forgot it somewhere and lost the complete machine. I never heard it working. I was very curious to how it would sound. The connector on the bottom is for a car docking station.
That makes sense about the car dock, a lot of these early ones were sold for car duty. I've seen this model listed as a C201-FM or CZ01-FM, any idea which is right, it looks like a "Z" to me.
A great catch indeed! Never seen Radio compact cassette machines with that rotary selection switch. Was used to seeing such switches only on some R2R's like my friend had once.. Will share that Grundig photo with my pals if you don't mind..
Some of the very first players had rotary or the ones that moved like a plus sign "+" but they quickly disappeared when piano keys came out. I can see why only a handful of companies made transports, while just sliding metal, they were pretty complicated and it had to have been easier to just buy them in bulk.
I don't know, it looks kind of like a National Panasonic? For sale on ebay at the moment, while not a beauty, if your into the first boomboxes, this has to be one of them. It's stamped "Japan" on the back and the model number is GEN-3930A https://www.ebay.com/itm/156491935869
Montgomery Wards was a huge chain of department stores over here, this is from mlive.com. Like Sears and JCPenny's, they were mostly anchor stores at the local malls and they didn't make their own equipment. JCPenny's was more home furnishings, Wards had everything across the board but was kind of "normal," Sears had everything but their Craftsman Tools and Kenmore Appliances were made by top tier manufacturers making them seem a little more up-market. My town had all three but we never saw the really nice equipment in any of the stores.
From 1968 Radio Bulletin, it's hard to tell if these were exciting times with the format that took over the world. I definately don't see the other formats in any of these magazines.
there's probably an english Wiki-page existing, i was to lazy to find out... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabamobil
The person that posted this says the magazine was 1969, I think this is a never before seen Crown CTR-8750? Anybody know this model? Of course it's tape only.
