Tanashin Denki? and some other transports.

Everyone is talking about Tanashin these days; are they the ones making all of the new cassette deck mechanicals? If I find something I'll post it here, feel free to contribute anything of value.



They are still in business but there's no mention of cassette decks under current products.
https://www.tanashin.co.jp/english/index.html

 

They claimed they had 30% of the market in 1975

 

From ETI, 1975, a very similar article with some more info.

 

From 2002, Tanashin sued Thompson Electronics (RCA, GE) for copyright infringement.

 

The sales chart in 1997 for the different mechinisms they had for media

 

Some of the mech available to buy in 2001, it looks like all cassette mechanism production stopped in 2007.
Tanashin TN-21Z



Tanashin 217LG



Tanashin TN-591R



Tanashin TN-21ZW



Tanashin TN-9X



Tanashin TN-8S



Tanashin TN-59R

 

Primary customers in 2001, it wouldn't surprise me if one of these ended up with the tooling.

 

Production dates for the mechanisms

 

From the Retro Kram Website and Kilobyte Magazine. (Lot's of neat stuff on this site)
https://retro.wtf/

 

From the American Conservative Website
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-last-cassette-player-standing/

 

Some Tanashin Design Patents, the 2nd two look like VCR transports.
From 1988





From 1989

 

Tanashin setting up a big plant in Singapore 1978

 

The Business Times, 1978 Singapore, Everyone's moving to Singapore and Tanashin has 50% market share!

 

Hiring!
1980



1982



1989

 

There's a new guy in town, Lisonic Electric Company of Taiwan from 1987

 

I found this ad on a Chinese Blog, it says it's the Zhanyu Trading Company, Aisheng Enterprise Line

 

A more modern version, same company, this looks similar to a lot of nicer looking transports with pig-nose screws holding the door on.

 

Same company, I wonder how many boomboxes used these controls?

 

Here's some from a company named Vortex dated 1981