Got a Aiwa HS-RM549 this week.

The Aiwa  HS-RM539 is a  Aiwa cassette player  with auto-reverse that was  part of  one of the  final series of cassete players released from Aiwa in 2003-2004.

When the HS-RM539 was released in 2003,  Sony now fully owned Aiwa and the 90's Aiwa logo was replaced by a newer one as seen in the photo and their final HS- series models took on a Sony like  styling.

Aiwa's players in 2003/04 have  features taken from Sony's Walkman line like where the cassette was inserted at the rear and most controls on the front and used auto-reverse cassette mechanisms that appear to mostly  identical to the ones used in Walkman models from 2003.

Some of the HS-RM539 features include

•  auto-reverse with Sony type mode/direction  switches on one side
• 40 preset AM/FM radio, digitally tuned
• LCD display display "tape" when a cassette plays and station/preset in radio mode
• Aiwa  SUPER BASS (bass boost)-a featured even seen in 2003-2004 Aiwa models. 
• uses 2 AA batteries (a neat compact door on the bottom is openable to insert them)

Actually, some of these late units are not too bad, surprisingly.

I have a JX-749 logic controlled late model aiwa, and although you can tell that they cut costs everywhere (plastic flywheels, simplified solenoid-less logic control, plastic chassis) It does a pretty good job. And they are actually more reliable as they use larger, simpler motors, larger plastic components, and modern circuit boards with better quality caps (or even tantalum/solid!). Even melted belts are easy to clean off the flywheels unlike brass flywheels. Sadly they look and feel cheap. The Jx 749, for all its "cheapness", actually has a rather feature filled logic controlled microchip, which by that time, had become cheap enough to put in budget machines. However, the wow and flutter and amp quality leave a little to be desired.

Best of all, they look so cruddy that they can be obtained cheaply. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for a late model indonesian made panasonic RQ-CR07V. This autoreverse unit has the fantastic ability to knock itself out of alignment every time it changes side! And it sounds like crap.