Early pre-boomboxes

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This Hitachi TRQ-222 is currently being offered by someone on eBay for parts or repair (item#[ebay]200965014875[/ebay]). Interesting for its (admittedly vague) resemblance to my Sanyo C-2 (or other separable speaker boomboxes). Lacks a radio tuner (which I imagine disqualifies it being considered a proper boombox) but it does have left and right tone controls...

HITACHI_TRQ-222.JPG

It would be interesting to see other 'pre-boomboxes' in your collections...
 

Beosystem10

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The UK's best must be the Hacker SP80. Even bigger than the RPC1 cassette Sovereign, it also has the company's trademark all wooden cabinet, the large Celestion speakers and bass that you just won't find in plastic boxes. The SP80 has its speakers at the ends and both front and rear panels of the cab are the same, so you can't see immediately whether you're seeing the front or the back. Unlike most of Hacker's large radios, the SP80 has no turntable and stands on small rubber feet instead, Aux line input is - as with all Hackers - by a DIN socket that automatically cuts the tuner when a source is connected.
Overall size is roughly the same as a Sharp GF-555 but the Hacker weighs even more at nearly 2st!
A good SP80 will beat the living bejayzus out of a Wave or any of thae modern boxes with their speakers at the ends, power is a clean 7wpc into 92db/W speakers from its push-pull a/f amps which use big Germanium Darlos in final a/f.

A good one will cost around £300-£500 and recently, Hackers have been imported to the USA at long last where their RF and IF performance has made them something of a cult classic. Shame they never sold outside of the UK during the company's lifetime, here's piccies:

hacker-sp80-res-2.jpg
hacker-sp80-res-4.jpg


And the RM.org link: http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/hackersnd_sp80sp_8.html
 
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