NOS - Personal Stereo: Opening a bit of the '90s
As promised yesterday, here is the second of this week's two videos.
In this one I'm opening up and testing a 'New Old Stock' Aiwa personal stereo from 1990. For me there is something magical about opening a long forgotten box. I can't help but think about the now middle-aged people who were teenagers back when this was on sale, who got one for Christmas and were over the moon with it. It's a little bit of time travel.
Apparently the story behind these (courtesy of the Tapeheads.net forum) - is that a company developing a 'mind-machine' acquired 1000 Aiwa HS-PC202 MIII personal stereos from a batch of 10,000 that were originally destined for Media Markt in Germany. They sold hundreds of their specially modified version, but the machines that are being offered for sale now are the unused ones that were left over and were pretty much forgotten about in a warehouse until being recently rediscovered.
If you want to get a good quality, totally unused personal stereo cassette player - I don't feel that I'm over-egging it when I say that this might be one of your last chances.
If you do decide to buy one and the chap on ebay is out of stock...bookmark his store and keep checking, after he sells one - he relists another. Here is the (affiliated) link: https://ebay.to/2I89GUO
UPDATE: I've re-worked quite a bit of this since the original upload to include more Dolby C tests and comparisons. The majority of the new sections start around the 5 minute mark.
Comments (36)
Mat, in the outro you mentioned that there were several older videos you are particularly proud of. Is there a list of what you feel are your "greatest hits", so to speak?
I went through some old videos the other day and picked out some of my favourites and put them in a playlist. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN2yCnHTG_6rgNJpN_XdvA0l20NrNZk8T" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN2yCnHTG_6rgNJpN_XdvA0l20NrNZk8T</a>
I actually like watching the outro, music and all. Gives you a moment to think about what you've just watched, and it wraps things up nicely. :)
Brought back memories of pockets full of rechargeable triple A batteries on long days out another cracking vid!
I agree with @Stephan and @Brendon, I think the low quality Dolby C decoding must have something to do with a slight mis-alignment of the heads in comparison to the recording deck's ones. High freqs are the most prone to disappear or get affected in those cases, I think. Is there any screw next to the Aiwa's heads that would allow you to play with azimuth at all? (And would that make any difference at all though?) And Matt, great video, I equally enjoy both quick ones and super elaborate ones :)
Unfortunately I won’t have time to experiment any further. However I think I’d probably end up doing more harm than good just to play a single tape that I don’t need to use again. I like to point out issues in videos that may be a problem for other people, but I’m ok with never using Dolby C.
I love the outro music! Moar of eet!
I had the previous model to this one with the rechargeable battery and it felt almost futuristic, to my teen eyes it didn't look much bigger than a cassette box which seemed an impossible feat of engineering.
For what it's worth, I always enjoy the outro sections. You picked very pleasant ending credits music for it.
Loved the outro! Must be some real knuckleheads about. Btw I watch your old videos regularly as I (try to) mend old tape decks and things
I'm glad you do. I wish youtube didn't bury the old content as much.
Memories are fuzzy but that unit looks AWFULLY familiar...
My first portable was an AIWA, so that (again) triggers some memories...
This brings back memories... I was into music and audio from a very early age (I basically grew up in a loudspeaker DIY shop) and I have a lot of fond memories of recording tapes and playing them back on my walkmen (walkmans?) I never had a personal stereo that could decode Dolby C but I always had a suspicion that Dolby B did something funky to the sound. Things are probably different when you have a deck as good as Mat's Sony ES unit but with lesser hardware and play/record heads that are not necessarily aligned quite the same way, results can probably vary considerably. I usually recorded without Dolby NR and lived with some hiss that didn't bother me too much. Otherwise, this Aiwa machine doesn't seem to be half bad (especially after almost three decades). While the wow and flutter results can't touch the Sony "pro" walkman, they are reasonably good and probably next to inaudible (especially on the go).
i think the wow and flutter measurements for portable cassette players are subject to an additional consideration that home units aren't: measuring the wow and flutter while the user is carrying the portable cassette deck around in their hands or pockets while walking or exercising. it would be silly in this age of spotify on every phone to bother measuring that nowadays, but at the time it was a consideration. as always, thanks for the excellent video!
New old stock ... Ahh, to find a Nakamichi cassette deck in the same condition!
I found the monologue over the outro a bit hilarious! I think it was rather creative to solve the "problem" of the long outro in a way that leaves it in place (as it should stay) while educating the relevant critics on how to use YouTube properly. It also prompted me to pay a bit more attention to the sequence this time. I notice you have a Christopher Pierce in the credits. That is actually my legal name, though I didn't think you'd have access to that here. So am I in the credits twice, or is some imposter using my legal name without permission?
No it's a different chap - he's been a Patron for three years. However you've let the cat out of the bag with your name now...and I thought you were Mr Toasterking.
Another great vid Matt! Thanks for the plug. I've bumped the thread and forewarned the users but rest assured, I haven't published the ebay link. The tightwads (most even balk at the thought of spending money to keep us up and running so they're not getting an early heads up from me. You on the other hand (I don't care whether you donate or not - I don't check) are always most welcome due to your excellent content on the tube. Regards, Kelv
You've jogged my mind and reminded me to put a Tapeheads link in the video description text box (not that anyone ever looks in there unfortunately). I'll be putting this video out on Monday - the other video about wow&flutter will go out over the weekend. As far as donations it could do with being a bit easier - I turned off PMs (because I'd miss them) - so I can't get the link. I'm sure you have your reasons - but a PayPal donate button would work better for me.
Those Kirkland batteries might be made by Costco, but I've had quite a few leak on me, which Duracell never do. That last bit is reminiscent of an Eric Idle classic...
UPDATE: I've re-worked quite a bit of this since the original upload to include more Dolby C tests and comparisons. The majority of the new sections start around the 5 minute mark.
OK - sounds like another good reason to avoid using it.
I love how you flipped between Dolby and Normal/Metal tape settings on the playback. Back in the day when I had my (several) Aiwas, I recall messing with these settings not really knowing or understanding what they were all about except the "Dolby is better" or "Metal is better" jargon. Even though I recorded my mixtapes on Chrome or Metal with Dolby B or C, I think I listened to everything on Normal with Dolby OFF because the sound was much brighter and the hiss was almost non-existent. Of course, New Wave mix tape is not Classical music :-)
Pete: I also used to switch Dolby off, at least on Type I tapes, as it "compensated" for the high frequence rolloff generated by the less-than-stellar heads on my budget Technics tape deck. I'd suggest to Mat that the muffled high frequencies on the Aiwa are more likely caused by cheapo heads, not by degraded circuit board components.
As someone who only really came across the Aiwa brand towards the end of the 90s it's nice to see that they did make some high end products, I only ever considered them to be a cheap 'Argos' brand because I didn't know any better. I still enjoy watching the outro after all of these years, if there was a way to randomise the clips (apart from the tray-loading record player - that fits perfectly) it would be even better, but I can't think of an easy way to do that.
In recent videos I've tried to sync quite a few more sections to the audio - so things like the changing records on the vertical player match the beat.
Very good, as a always. Nice balance if history and tech specs. I always watch the outro because I see stuff I hadn’t noticed before! My dad got me an Aiwa in the early 1980’s - around 1982. I used it all the time from ‘82-‘84 as I was studying for my Electrical Engineering degree at Texas Tech. The ability to isolate myself using just the headphones was enormous.
It's so nice to see someone who savours unpacking a new item as much as I do! Maybe at some point you could do a potted history of some of the significant Japanese tech companies and their major contributions - I realise I know nothing really about Aiwa, Akai, Matsushita, JVC, Sony etc. I guess some are just brand names rather than corporate identities. I know I could look them up on Wikipedia, but I am sure there will be numerous others you know about that most of your viewers will not have heard of..... just a thought. Have a good weekend, Mat, and thanks for the treat of two Techmoan videos in one week. Our cups truly runneth over!
I am sure my friend had that model
I do like to watch the outro pretty much every time though. It's got some nice music and it's always nice to see my name scrolling up there in the credits :)
Nice! Panasonic machines were really nice too especially at the end of the cassette era, tiny machines with good quality and advanced functions
They were, they made some smart little players - but unfortunately they seem to suffer from similar reliability issues to many of the old Aiwa ones.
Perhaps it's because of the YouTube conversion, but am I correct in saying that it sounded better when you turned Dolby C off and switched to the 'normal' position? It sounded as though you lost an entire percussion track and it was muffled when they were turned on. Whereas when they when turned off the sound was clearer and more dynamic.
That's the thing with Dolby - some prefer it off. In reality though recording with it on boosted the hi-hat above where it was on the original recording. I'll try to find out which track it was so we can compare.
I'm not one for impulse buys - but I just bought one and haven't even watched the vid!