A new Korean ‘Walkman’ shows it’s all over.

Relevant to this entry - granted, quite late - but look at this 'Crap, Version 2500' "Professional Bluetooth Cassette Player White Bluetooth Player For Hiking Camping" https://ebay.to/3iXR7Gt Why the f*** do they need a 'professional' Bluetooth cassette player for camping, anyway? 🤔

no video this week?

Hey Mat, how do you find information on unusual audio products? I’d really love a list of all Pioneer cassette decks with date of release and price but all the catalogs I’ve found seem to be incomplete - and that doesn’t even cover the Japan only products. Sites like the Vintage Knob only cover select products - I think CassetteDeck.org has more comprehensive listings but they aren’t categorized by model tier or year. You seem to have a great ability to find the obscure and interesting.

On Techmoans advise I bought a real SONY Walkman that does everything I want. All tape types, noise reduction and auto reverse. Not cheap. But great sound.

Always hope for a Moans at the end... will it ever happen again?

I always try to watch the Patreon version AND the public version, and sometimes I am lucky enough to get updates in the public (which you surely mentioned here, but ... welll ...). I appreciated the explanation of the "Rewind Blossom". It took the campaign from "Oh, those krazy Korean kids and their krappy kasettes!" to "hey, that's a pretty clever campaign!" Good on the agency that came up with that. What I think would have blinded me to that (if this were a similar Anglosphere campaign) is that 1990s music is That New Stuff. :-) And it being new, why *wouldn't* current acts be playing The New Stuff. But of course, my age-addled brain doesn't do the math quickly enough to realize that 90s music for a kid today is like 40s music was when I was a kid ... *sigh*

Thanks for this. I do wonder if at some point in the future we're going to see some Japanese Otaku group will go and manufacture a very high end version of the cassette mechanism / player that will probably cost 10000s to buy. Now that would be something to see.

I visited South Korea ten years ago. I soon became accustomed to the sight of THE FIVE CUTE BOYS. Every retail shop everywhere had stacks of various merchandise featuring FIVE CUTE BOYS (rarely the same five). At the time I had no knowledge whatsoever of K-pop but it was obvious that retailers understood that the raw buying power of lovestruck teenage girls was immense and that it was very much in their own best interests to give as much shelf space as possible to products featuring FIVE CUTE BOYS.

I Sherwoodn't want one of those.

It’s probably possible to build something that sounds slightly better by using the same design but better materials, though whether that’s worth it is questionable.

i have to agree with Leigh, if you really want a decent Walkman today then you really are better off buying almost any early units fromSony,Toshiba,Aiwa etc. You can still pick up decnt units from as little as £10 ~ £30 from ebay if you are prepared to dig around and be patient, most will need a belt replacement, but they are relatively easy to do, and there is nothing quite as satisfying as using a Walkman that you have refurbished yourself. you once refurbished a Sony WM ~ W800 and that inspired me to havea go. I now own over 100 units from the top end pro mdels down to cheaper models and they have become a bit of a passion of mine., well worth the effort and ever single one of them sounding better than the new rubbish that no name companys keep knocking out.

That's a shame... I've seen a few people on Instagram rave about this machine... Was going to try to get one... I'll not bother now... 😁 Thanks for an honest review!

I also noticed on the edit that you switched the background color in the thumbnail text circle from green to blue. Looks good, although the other one was fine - perhaps a method to distinguish the old and new version?

I just hope someday 3d printers will get so good (and strong materials will be available) that we will be able to scan a mechanism of the best 80s players and just print them. Seeing them go from a very niche almost unusable gadget (in the past you spent more time tuning and cleaning than actual printing) to the prusa I have on my desk that I use all the time to print stuff for hobbies and needed around the house gives me hope.

I'm curious why we are still able to manufacture high end turntables. Is it because they can be sold for a lot more ? Or is it a bigger market ? Or, even if they fetch "audiophile" prices they are more simple mechanically.

I just made an D.I.Y. Walkman using "virtual cassette". You can attually see an cassette played back into the Walkman, but the walkman is an Mp4 player, and the cassette is a video of one real cassette played back in a real deck. Totally unusefull but very funny.

Having just bought 1000 of these to sell on eBay, I’m crossing you off my Christmas card list. 😄

It's a lost art now making decent cassette decks. The supply chains, factory lines, machinery, staff, knowledge have all gone, so we are left with the dregs. That Sony Walkman not much bigger than a cassette tape is a work of art in comparison, the R&D and expertise and passion that must have gone into that design will never be replicated again for cassettes, as simply there is not enough money in it. The only option for anyone interested in cassettes is to snap up decent vintage gear on Ebay and keep it maintained. The days of pouring over a Hi-Fi catalogue and looking at all the gear, where the manufacturers name on the cassette deck, amplifier or turntable was actually the same company that really made it, often proudly showing “Made in Japan”, is long gone.

Good video, I always appreciate you pointing out the bad along with the good (if there is any).

Nice vid. You could give it a title like “Are new cassette players any good? This is how you can tell”. Hope it helps.

I appreciate how the design aesthetic is a callback to cassette cases, so makes a nice pairing with a collection. Other than that, wow (and flutter) that was awful. 😐

I'm not surprised that it plays too fast. As a kid/teen in the 80s I often noticed that music would play slightly too fast on cheaply made tape players, something I was the only one to notice or care about among my peers. I wondered why it was the case for years until recently, when I found some (but not a lot) information that could explain it. Apparently despite it being described as 1 7/8"/s (which converts to 4.7625cm/s), the standard compact cassette speed as defined by Philips is actually 4.75cm/s. For some reason many low end tape players made in Asia (Korea/China) in the 80s/90s used the faster 4.7625cm/s speed, some of them even rounding it up to 4.8cm/s, which was noticeable to people sensitive to pitch differences.

I hope viewers will be able to see the service a review such as this provides… and is quite entertaining as well. Hopefully! I find your videos are a haven from the speed freak, micro attention garbage that pretty much fills most of YouTube. Tight video- no notes. Always wanted to tell you I love the closing credits music and editing. The little electronic noise at the very end. Very nice. That’s all.

Mat, you’ve already explained the reasons for it being nearly impossible for anyone to produce a high-quality cassette device these days. I recall a previous video of yours talking about the hype surrounding the so-called cassette comeback. In that video you pointed out the massive numbers of cassettes that were sold in the format's heyday which absolutely dwarfs the sales of cassettes nowadays. As I understand it, during the days of massive cassette sales, an electronics firm could make money by selling highly engineered devices because lots of people wanted to buy them. Those firms were also building on previous engineering knowledge and success in the field. After the cassette market tanked, the skilled designers, engineers and workers were gone along with the production line equipment needed to make the higher-end devices. It's very difficult to start again basically from scratch to build up the know-how and manufacturing equipment to start making high-end cassette players now especially when there isn’t much of a demand for them, even taking the cassette comeback into consideration.

Mat, do you think this is the case because 1. The market doesn't have a need for a high fidelity cassette player, only functional jewelry and novelties 2. The market does have such a need, and producers are falsely representing their lo fi products as hi fi because economically, creating a hi fi cassette mechanism is not feasible 3. No one has the nerve to try to create a hi fi cassette player.

A friend of mine was going to buy something like this. For some reason he wanted a portable tape player with bluetooth. Thankfully I managed to talk him into buying a used Walkman and a bluetooth adapter instead.

Your pivoting was well-executed. The blunt message came through "if you can't handle the truth don't shoot the messenger; I'm calling it like it is" and I like that a lot. What bothers me is the amount of effort taken with the elaborate packaging and hype put into a bungled product. No wonder the "young'uns" think cassettes were garbage. Edited to add: have you thought of leaving some of those cards with the young ladies in a conspicuous place as a jest for the Mrs.? 😅 Oh, and the WM EX-900 sounds great!

I find it amusing that pictured next to the Sony, the "Kassette" actually looks older! I saw that Bush one you reviewed pop up on a sponsored Facebook advert. I hid the advert, giving "Offensive" as my reasoning! By the way, I'm sure your inbox is full of this, but ALDI are doing another "boombox" this week. It looked like the brand was Kuoni, who I thought were a travel firm!

For some people the truth hurts Mat. I saw one of my young nieces posting on Facebook promoting Will Youngs new album which has been released on Vinyl, CD and Cassette. I told her she should have asked me before I stared throwing out a lot of my old Hi-Fi equipment. When I mentioned I still had a Sony Cassette deck she replied on her post. I Wannn it.

Brace yourself for a torrent of dislikes and death threats, Mat. Kpop stans are completely insane and will probably be very upset by your indifference to their idols. On the plus side, this video should attract way more viewers than usual, and the YT algorithm is just as happy with dislikes as it is with likes.

Great video. I have one of those cheap usb tape decks great for converting talking audio (brought it to transfer family talking tapes). Not so good on music but no surprise there. Think its a mono head. Wish they would bring out a decent tape walkman i would buy it, i wait in anticipation for that review but dont think it will ever come. I hope you gave bob a decent funeral by way. Just seen a DAT being sold local £450

I learned something. as I often do watching these videos, though often it is more British slang. A piano piece is a good way to judge wow and flutter without a meter. Next time I hear a tape that sounds like crap I will seem like an expert. That being said, the sound quality on this reminded me of the Panapic. At least the expectations for that were low to start with. I will also note that "William"'s sense of humor flows through his patrons. I always get a laugh from the comments.

I suppose my question is... What was the last, good, portable tape player? (On the assumption that ALL modern players have been junk for a good few years)

Very valuable information, thank you. My only suggestion is to title it in a sexy and mysterious way when it goes public to bait people into watching :) "Has this Korean company made a modern-day Walkman...?" Although that's just me -- you probably have actual integrity.

So glad I have a good original Walkman, and a pretty good older one. Hoping it never breaks.

Oh thank goodness... The wife is watching a woodwork program on iPlayer and then get a notification from Techmoans channel here :) Loving seeing the old intro again, seeing as I did the modern version I should be bias, but I do like the other ones:) Now just waiting for this program to finish so I can watch this new one. Thanks William Mat Techmoan

Shenanigans like this just reinforce my negative feelings towards marketing teams. It's bad enough when it's off-the-shelf junk but when Kickstarters start asking stupid money for their remixed junk I really feel sorry for the customers.

I bought one of those T2MP3 players boxed in as new condition in a local charity shop for £5. still in its plain brown box. In there was a catalogue from "Aspect Two" full of things like "Snuggle Wraps" and Bird Baths dated 2009. I wouldn't have been disappointed if I'd paid £18 for a new one from Amazon but I wonder how much the Korean one was in its fancy box

As a fellow Korean I find this to be an absolute horror show: I just read the manual of this "walkman" and it says "any noise coming out of your headphone is inherent flaw to the original cassette tapes and not the fault of your machine". LOL And of course, the main unit was made in China. It is an utter shame that the promo is touting this thing as "sounding just like how it used to be in the 1990s" - I lived in the 1990s and I had portable stereos made by Samsung (and Sony and Aiwa, as well) and they sounded absolutely superior than these piece of garbage. KT, or Korea Telecom, is ex-national phone service provider and still one of the biggest cell phone services in my country. The whole point of the package is all about the promo of the K-Pop Idol stars - the whole package was selling for KRW 110,000 (roughly 95 USD) - something I would never pay for. I simply don't understand why people are paying such ridiculous amount of money for something little more than a cheap novelty. (* I just noticed that people are reselling the cassette tape and other collectibles on the second hand market and more often than not they got rid of the cassette player in the bundle - so clearly people are not happy with the machines.)

It is wild to me that a company isn’t making a decent portable cassette player/recorder. If I only knew my Walkman Recorder would one day fetch close to a thousand dollars on eBay, I would’ve kept better care of it. At least it got me through lots of terrible morning Subway rides in New York City as a kid. Now I just have a decent Sony dual deck from the 90’s I bought refurbished second hand. I also thankfully caught used blank tapes before they jumped in price. Couple cases of Maxell XL-II’s from the 70’s through the 90’s. The older tapes are worth way more! I would love a NEW Walkman Recorder. Part of me wants to shell out for a used vintage model I trust from the past. I just think with the rise in vinyl and now cassette sales, people are really enjoying cassettes again, even just as a keepsake. It’s a shame they’re just using the low end components to make these cheap players. I think if a company went in on a really decent Walkman, priced it at around $200, they’d do good in the niche market. I absolutely LOVE my Anabis GP-N3R that you featured. I’ve lined out it to speakers and while the cheap Audio Technical cartridge doesn’t compare to my Ortofon 2M Blue, it at least doesn’t destroy my records and gives people SOME idea of how good vinyl can truly sound! They nailed it with that record player. I hope they do it with cassettes! And don’t even ask me where my PortaStudio 424 went. I weep that I sold it, but I needed the money at the time. It costs the same if not more to buy a “new” one!

And then at the end immediately the over engineered Akai auto-reverse mechanism 😈 I guess the packaging is worth more and took more time to put together...

Oh no! Just the thumbnail made me put away my credit card.

Really appreciate these PSAs on crap 'retro' mechanisms, if id ever seen that Kasette player for sale I'd have bought it in a heartbeat...

Don't you love it when you start a video with a whole narrative in mind and then partway through you're thinking "oh no, oh no, this thing is much better/worse than I thought" and have to pivot?

Is it Nakamichi? hohoho....

About to watch this but I did see this article about a new walkman from a french company being planned a little while ago, know much about this? https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2020/01/19/the-walkman-and-cassette-tapes-are-making-a-comeback/?sh=6b16aa7950ad Also heres their site - https://walkman-la-toile-sur-ecoute.myshopify.com/

I'm on the edge of my seat... will it be the Tanashin mechanism??