I am quite new here, so here goes...........
The year: Christmas 1986, I think.
Always wanted a boomer, but then, who didn't? This is the 80s! Today's kid without a mobile phone was like us without a boomer.....You were no-one without a boomer! Or at least, that's how it seemed to run around my streets.
Comes downstairs that Christmas morning, and my older sister is busy pulling out all her pressies from her santa-sack, and I noticed that mine wasn't half as full as hers......or my younger sisters. Why could that be? It didn't take me too long to find out......
Next to my pressie sack, stood up on its end was a big tall rectangular present. Well, it looked tall at the time!
I knew what was in there. Eggs don't come in big long rectangular parcels, so it had to be a boomer, no doubt.
Opened it, and there it was. My first boomer. Make?
.....Saisho. Well, it was my first box, so I was quite impressed with it. Not that many kids aged 9 had a box that big, with detachable speakers too!!
Just to prove my point, the kid next door had a little golden mono-box, and my Saisho just urinated all over it. His little mono-box would flop-out half-way up the volume dial, but my Saisho just kept on giving it large.
Other presents that year? Blank cassettes, a Ni-Cad battery charger WITH six C-cells!! Recharge for 16 hours, and then it's portable time, baby!
I may also like to point out, that back in the 80s in the UK, when you bought certain electrical items, in particular, boomboxes, it wasn't just a case of pull it out the box, plug-in and play. Oh no. The supplied power cord had to have a plug wired onto it!! :annoyed: So I had to wait a few hours for my dad to get up, have some tea and cigarettes before he would even pick up his screw drivers and put on a plug. The longest two hours EVER!!!
So we got it going, and yeah, it went quite loud......I even had to do the obligatory breakdance/hip-hop thing and stand there in the front room with my boombox on my shoulder, much to everyone's hilarity.
This box wasn't without its problems though. Within one week, the tape deck was starting to run stupidly slow, and just after one year, a month after the warranty expired on it, the jack-plug socket on the back decided to give up on me. It was a loose solder joint on the board inside. So after borrowing the neighbor's very expensive Weller soldering Iron, my pop cracked open the case and soldered that sucker back up, and got it booming again on all two speakers!
Honestly though, this soldering iron we used.....It wasn't like one of those little wee things that looks like a pen with a power cord on it, oh no. This thing had a case, all various different tips to fix onto ot, a place inside the case to keep a roll of solder, the full works. The Iron itself looked like a gun! It even had a big red trigger!
It looked like a futuristic, no-bullet people-zapper! ( these days, we call 'em Tazers!
)
-------------
It was a couple of years later, that I was carrying my boomer along the street, when the handle decided to give out on me.
Anyone ever dropped a cheap 3-piece boomer? Then you know what happens. Batteries come flying out all over the place, and the speakers go rollin' down the street. Could be extremely embarrassing in a busy high street, so I am glad that it decided to give out down a small quiet residential street. Well, it was VERY quiet along there after my boomer had hit the ground!!
I had that box until '97, when the tape deck started going all funny on me. Even the cheap volume sliders were very crackly, and you really had to play with them to get the sound to work. Sometimes, the vibration of the woofers would be enough to cause them to stop working! One speaker would suddenly cut out, and you'd have to re-jiggle the vol slider to get it working again. Sometimes, the other woofer would vibrate it back on again!
Piece of crap! I decided it was time to chuck it out. So after opening the speaker boxes and puling the magnets off, I chucked it away.
I have no regrets about chucking it.....Would I ever want another, should someone find one? NO WAY.
To give you an idea of what this box was like, it was similar in size and power output to that of a Panasonic RX-C-36, but I can now inform you that the panasonic can go WAY louder!
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Christmas 1993......Another boomer, and this time, I wanted Double Cassette! Opened the box, and there it was!
Once again.....No plug. Being a bit older, I could now wire my own plug onto the cord that cannot be removed from these boxes. Its permanently fixed in there!
A double-cassette box. Make: Hitachi. The model was TRK-3D30. I really wanted the 3D80 though!
For the record, a 3D30 as £79.99, and the 3D80 was £129.99, from Argos. Year 1993/1994
I still have my 3D30! YAY !!!!
16 years of age, and still working, although the sliders on it could use a good cleaning.....They're starting to go a bit Saisho on me!! :annoyed:
In 1995, my 3D30 was placed into second-position for audio entertainment, when I got my first Hi-Fi, which was an Aiwa Z-1290. I later coupled that to a pair of Jamo 265s. BOOM!
I couldn't carry that around though, so the little Hitachi stayed with me right though the 90s, and right up until the middle of 2001.
= = = = = =
So, what happened in 2001 ? OH MY GOODNESS !!!!!!! From that dy to this, I have never seen another boombox as huge and as heavy as the one I saw in that record store !!!!!!!!! What could it be? Well, it had an upright turntable in it, with red woofers!
I also found out, that he had THREE of them!!!!! I WANT ONE !!!! But I couldn't afford his asking price.
That box stayed there for a few more years until, back in October 2004, I was absolutely blown away by this HUUUUGE 4-woofer BEAST of a box in the machine workshop where I worked. MY GOODNESS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Er.......Sharp..........G...............F..........................767 !!!!!!!
HAD TO HAVE IT !!!!!! Owner says 'No sale'. Whaaaaatt?!
Hold on one moment!!! The record store boomer! Turntable! Red Woofers! I have a job, I have the cash!
That weekend...........
I get on the train and go back to the record store. Guess what? No VZ. Gone.
I said to the store owner that i thought I could trust him to save it for me, but he said that times got tough, and he had to sell.
But.......I still have one left. Its back at my basement, so if you wait until I close the store, we can go back to the basement, and you can check it out.
YESSSS !!!!!!!
So I examined the box, flashed the cash, and got out of there a bit half-sharpish before he could reverse the deal and take the box back!
Have YOU ever tried legging it with a VZ? These things have built-in anti-theft! The weapon? WEIGHT. Lots of.
I ended up getting a taxi cab back to the train station, and when I was there, I was getting all kinds of funny looks!
Even back home on the train, the VZ picked up a few admirers!
I haven't been the same since. That year just got better and better.
At the end of November, I won an eBay auction! What could it be?
Coming from australia, it took THREE MONTHS to arrive to the UK!
Remember the Workshop boomer? YEP!! A Sharp GF-767.
And then in December, I won another big boomer from eBay.......The GF-777 YESSSS
Here they are, together:
It must have been around about November 2004 that I discovered Stereo2Go.
Shortly after that, I laid down the foundations for a thread that was to become legendary!
Even today, no other thread even comes close to its massive total of more than EIGHT HUNDRED POSTS !!!!!
Really!
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
As some of you know, I was away from there for a couple of years, because of PanFan.
Let's leave that behind......Let's move on, let's keep those woofers pumpin'.
Of course, I have many more boxes, and guess what? That 3D80 that I always wanted back in the day?
I now have one to keep my 3D30 company! SUPER YAAAAAAY!
End.
-BoomBoxDeluxe.
(His dad got in from the BX on our local U.S airbase).
