Lasonic TRC-920 said:
Looks like something an executive would have in his office
Given what these cost, that's likely who had them. Which is one of the reasons I collect them. Think about this, and I'm going off of memory, new in the PX circa 1983/84 at Robinson Barracks (Stuttgart Germany) cost was about $400-450.00. The C4/C5 twins could be had for about $250 or so. The C7 was about $325-350. The C1 thru C3 was around $125-200.
That being said however, there were quite a few kids I knew that had these type of boomers and treated them like any ol' M70.
It took batteries like anything else and in my eyes, the component boomers were the pinnacle of design getting as close to true hi-fidelity stereo as you could in a portable product.
Truth be told, and this old nugget has been pounded into dirt, the first portable stereo was developed by Henry Kloss with the KLH Model 11 portable (though not powered by batteries) record player. What this meant was at least you could take it and your records to a friends house, or school, or party (as long as you had AC) thus the first (albeit clumsy by todays standards) means for youth of that era to share music and play it too was born.
Given that this was the medium of choice at the time (even reel to reel hadn't taken off yet except for commercial use) it made sense and packed two speakers which was separate when taken apart. Per Henry Kloss (an audio genius and legend) this was the proper way to listen to music. This in turn was the daddy to the Philips-Norelco "Carry-Corder" 150 cassette player which housed everything into a single unit, ran on five C cells, but was...monaural. In either case, neither had a radio function. Philips would by the late sixties eventually release a system which looked like a cube with a handle that had radio and cassette functions and ran on batteries...and played in stereo.
Thus, the first portable stereo music system was...a component system.
I just did it for Ebay. Come on though, you gotta admit it looks sweet. Here's another pic:
