A barely-luggable record-playing boombox
This time I’m finally getting around to a task I’ve put off tackling for a couple of years. I’m taking a look at a Sharp VZ-2000. It's a sort-of-portable, record playing music system. It could be fun, but first I had to face my disassembly fears and open it up in order to get the vital record player component functional.
You can see how I get on in the video - https://youtu.be/tIxc7MpgOzU
This video took an unusually long time to complete. I wasn't happy with some of the video I'd shot and the pacing was way off in places. After a few more days of work with reshoots and what have you, I’m now finally happy with the way it turned out.
However since it’s taken me well over a week to get the video to this point I’m not going to put this one live on YouTube tomorrow, I’ll wait a week. I prefer Patrons to have a decent period of exclusivity and this also means I have more wiggle room if the next project goes south.
Last week's video about the CD lathe has proven to be unusually popular and still seems to have some legs so that video will have to remain my most recent publicly accessible YT release for another week.
If I haven’t yet answered your message or emails I apologise, I’ll see if I can catch up over the weekend.
Take care, best wishes and have a good one.
Comments (97)
Hope you didn't pay this much for it check out this ad. https://www.facebook.com/share/kGhpCUyVn8vqDA96/?mibextid=kL3p88
I don’t click Facebook links but it cost me a few hundred pounds.
That was excellent, takes me back to working in 'The Hifi Repair Shop' in Edinburgh when I was at UNi in the 80s.. Your repair skills have progressed immeasurably since I started watching your videos - apart from fault-finding PCBs, there's no difference from how we would have repaired units like this in a "professional" environment. You need to start watching Big Clive ;-)
Thanks - I’m still very much mechanical more than electronic in my repair skills. At my age I doubt that will change much. It’s a bit like someone retraining for a new job - while you could go from Insurance underwriter to Airline Pilot at age 50-odd, it’s highly unlikely that many would.
An incredible video, Mat... I'm not sure if you're one of the craziest people I've ever seen, or one of the bravest.. The jury is still out at this time. ;-) Thanks for your amazing work.
An incredible video, Mat... You are either one of the bravest people I've ever seen, or one of the craziest.. The jury is still out at this time this time. ;-) Thanks for all that you do.
That thing is a beast! I wish I had room for these kind of things! Also this explains why I had a small jump in vinyl sales the last day or two!
The only record player I ever owned was a Sharp VZ 3000. I'm sure it's still in my Mum's loft. I never concentrated more than when I was using this vertical player with a vinyl disc with a picture on 1 side. You couldn't get the A/B wrong even once.
I was surprised at the damping system. Looks they took it straight out of a battery compartment parts bin
Is that a fan in the background of the intro moving around? It looks kind of like a Jibo.
Techmoan: "It’s a Dyson Pure Cool Me™ (Black/Nickel)"
Sharp boomboxes take me back to my childhood. My mother was a manager for a large McDonald’s franchise when I was growing up. She had a really good crew that worked her shift and they won some sort of cash prize and my mother got a Sharp boombox. It didn’t have a record player built in but it did have cassette and like 20 diff bands on the receiver. I used to tune the dial on the LW & SW to listen to stations in Africa or Asia at night or listen to me (small) cassette collection clandestinely while I was supposedly sleeping. That radio was ginormous at least to a little kid.
I just rewatched your tape erase episode again and around 29 mins in you say "Sorry Queen; you've got to go".
I've got a bit of a habit of doing things like this - but on this occasion it was a quip on a lyric in Bohemian Rapsody.
Hey Mat. Don't apologize for saying things in your British tongue. It makes us A-muricans feel cultured. It's also refreshing to enjoy someone else's turn of phrase. (sorry if it makes some angry people realize not everyone is from their local bubble and that somehow makes them even more angry)
Not to mention - many English phrases, terms, and pronunciations make more sense than our Americanized 'Bad English.' Disclaimer: this opinion is from an American with a BA in English Writing/Communications; therefore, I have some validation of the aforementioned opinion.
I just noticed something else - this Boombox is also barely-huggable. I know, lame pun. 😞
Thoroughly enjoyed this one, Mat. So darn satisfying when the record player started working.
Mat, kind of obsessed with the soundalike version of “Blockbuster” that played for a second! Amazing work on this.
I know a chap who collects these kinds of records - I’m not sure whether it’s done ironically or whether he truly enjoys them. The Top of the Pops records were a common sight for many years in Woolworths. - I remember getting caught out as a young lad with a ‘Tribute to Grease’ LP (you can imagine how small the text was on the ‘Tribute to’ section of that title. I’d never noticed Travolta’s strong West Indian accent before this.
I do wonder if the nice action of the tape deck was the sort of thing designers of these things put into the product so it would impress people in shops. To help them make a decision on which one to buy. The old "Nice action" scene of Alan Partridge in Tandy comes to mind. Of course these days it is rare people tend to try things out in shops first.
Wow! So glad YOU were doing that repair and not me! The suspense was palpable - trying to get those speakers on w/out damaging circuit boards, etc. So satisfying when it worked! When you've got some nice colored vinyl in - it's so gorgeous when it spins. I agree with you that there's just nothing like seeing a record/tape/cd actually spin while playing. As my mom used to say in her proper British accent (she moved to TN from Birmingham) when my brother or I got a new stereo component: "That's a marvelous piece of equipment!" Keep up the amazing work!
Really loved this one, cheers Mat!
I’m glad, thanks.
Excellent video! Great to see all the details of the repair. That exploded view near the beginning looks pretty daunting but I guess the hard part is to keep track of where all the screws go. By the way I get the feeling that maybe in the factory they put it together with the front side down. And I wonder how much that red one on eBay is going to be after your video comes out hahaha!
No Techmoan Effects this time - the red one in the video on eBay is a 'Buy It Now' - it was $2,186.20, and now it's reduced to $2,111.05 due to the currency exchange rate fluctuation ( https://www.ebay.com/itm/195310143999 ) 😃
Thanks Mat. I am glad you got it working. Best wishes.
I suspect it's more than just the stylus making that Woolworths cover album sound a bit ropey!
Congratulations Matt, you did a stellar job, and the video will also be useful to enthusiasts like me, who will probably take one apart in the future.
I might even have a go at fixing a 2500 now in the future…we’ll see.
When I saw the casing of this Sharp device, I suddenly remembered the radio cassette recorder from my childhood that we had in our kitchen in the eighties. I did a little research into the history of Sharp's boomboxes and after a while I found the exact model: Sharp GF-4747. The GF-4747 is of course dwarfed by the VZ2000, but the design language definitely had a certain recognition value. I kind of like this blue/grey colour scheme.
You could tackle a nostalgic repair: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155149387734
Every time your hands enter the shot, it looks like a pixie working on a human-sized boombox. Which I enjoyed.
That would have been a killer in my youth, guess I fantasised about something like that, but never believed it actually could exist... Just so cool, and so satisfying to see you get it in perfect working condition! Great job!
Very impressive, both for the original engineering that went into this and the repair. It was a little suspenseful waiting to see if the thing would actually work after all that.
thanks for the rep,y
Yes , I did mean to add that it was my expectation that let me down . I sound a right misery about this but having taken this and other equipment apart I am constantly amazed at the intricate design of these things. A bit like so called music aficionados looking down on pop songs….try writing one for yourself..
An upgrade that would not upset the integrity may be better styli….must try that.
I think we’ve become accustomed in recent years to small hand held bluetooth speakers being capable of throwing out thumping bass. The natural assumption when you see something like the size of this boombox is to expect to be blown away. I blame neodymium magnets and the like - I think we’ve come on a long way in speaker tech. Now I think about it - none of my old stuff really impresses in the bass dept.
shi… resurrecting something like this is fantastic. Agree totally with way you said it sounds, you were quite generous . I had another description! Apparently some people have upgraded the speakers but I would want it totally stock regardless of the weak bass. Thankyou Sir Moan of Techshire as always.
This was a real pleasure, having just repaired this machine myself, also bought it a year or two ago, I can now properly appreciate the amount of effort that goes in to these videos. It is a hell of a faff and those two mystery screws too. The joy of resurr3cting
Lovely to see a repair work out so well. Will it make me more likely to tackle the VZ2500 I bought three years ago which still needs re-belting ? If any of your catalogue pictures came from Stereo2go I put them there. I still wonder how competitive the Kays catalogue price of £375 for the VZ2000 in 1982 was. The whole catalogue was aimed at easy weekly repayments. There again for just £4 more you could buy a complete twin deck Disco setup. The VZ2500 does seem to be a simplified model which which is reflected in the price. I believe it shares parts with the newer VZ3500 HiFi. Regarding the colour of newer units Black was the height of fashion in the 1980s. What could be more fashionable than black AV gear sat on Black Ash shelving ?
I think I must have borrowed some of your pictures - any evidence of the marketing of the VZ2000 is very hard to come by, I’m glad you had those. The blurry Australian advert on YouTube was too far gone to be of use. From my experience with those catalogues I’d suspect the usual retail price elsewhere to be closer to £330, but that’s just a guess.
That's the second biggest ghetto blaster (which is the term we used to describe them at the time) I've ever seen. And the biggest was probably in a sitcom or movie which was making a point of having a ridiculously huge boombox.
Hi Matt. The irony LOL. I had one of the for Christmas '82. Bought from County TV in Ellesmere, Shropshire. (£300) At the time it was certainly the "bees knees" piece of kit, and had brilliant sound. It had some serious use during my A levels in my study at Ellesmere College! I gave it away in the late 90's and regretted it for years, until I managed to win one on ebay last month. Won the auction at a very reasonable price, expecting a right fixer upper. Amazingly it arrived and was in near mint condition and working A1. Just lucky I guess. P&P was a fortune, but worth every penny. Sits in place next to the R2R! Great vid btw. A&J
I’m glad it arrived in one piece - I didn’t want to risk the postage so I waited to find one that I could pick up. It involved a dodgy looking exchange in the car park at Hartshead Moor service station.
Have you got an ultrasonic cleaner? Great for cleaning small fiddly things
I don’t - beyond a record cleaner.
Mat, I refurbed my VZ-2000 about 15 years ago and ran into the same lack of documentation. Once I figured it out, I recorded a take-apart video on my crappy mobile phone at the time and still have it. So the information exists in your circles, but you just had to ask! Alas, there's no longer a reason for anyone to ask now that you've made better work of it!
I suspected there was something floating around as I could see people mentioning ‘following the guide’ rather than ‘the service manual’.
Mat, how are you slipping out with my toys without me noticing? First my RCA Vibra 8-track changer, then my VZ-2000! I had to check and make sure they're both safe. LOL. But really, thank you for giving these classics the proper show and attention they deserve. Brilliant job, that!
Excellent video and repair!
Awesome episode! Love watching you take stuff apart to fix it.
Sir, I am impressed. And does he say, "I fixed it!" No, he says, "I haven't broken it!" Modest to a fault.
This was beautiful. ❤
Brilliant!!!
Great video! Your repair videos are always entertaining and this was such a cool / weird design. Never saw anything like this as a kid, despite being Gen X.
One of your best videos to date. Classic Techmoan.
Sorry, Mat.... Just Another Excellent Video. A beautiful piece of vintage equipment. you're troubleshooting efforts were well rewarded. Your ability to repair these units is incredible. Bravo!
Fantastic video!
Great Machine! Great repair of it. Next up you should find an Edison cylinder player boom box! 😆Thanks for the fun videos.
Nicely done. That is just classic 80’s. It’s actually impressive they run at all after 40 years.
Mat. Tremendous video. Watching these videos is like granting all the wishes for the things I wanted way back when. If I had been asked to dream up my favorite YouTube channel, I don’t think my imagination would have been quite large enough to dream up yours!
That’s very kind of you.
You must have an ancestor of the Jobe family!Great video as ever! Thank so so much!
That’s my 2am break sorted now 😃
30:12 Where can we obtain those T-Shirts and hoodies? They look very interesting!
Here’s the link https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/nerdkeyz?ref=seller-platform-mcnav§ion_id=37136753
You know, maybe you can do more videos on obvious audio bullshit as long as they're vaguely interesting. Maybe that's why it's doing well
I do have one more to do - but that device is so silly it’s even harder to understand why anyone bought one.
Lovely to watch, after the week I've had (surgery cancelled whilst on the operating table! They found an infection). So enjoyed the video whilst tanked up on antibiotics! Is there a specialised place that 3D prints things like that? I trod on a dial for my Philips N4307, and the only solution I've seen so far, is to buy a whole new machine. Not feasible! Anyone else reminded at the inside of the CED/VHD players when it was all open?
That sucks - seriously, I can sympathise with this situation more than most things. As for the 3D printed stuff, this was just on ebay. There are places online where you can order specific 3D printed things - but I’ve no experience with using them. Unfortunately if something is too uncommon it’s unlikely to be listed. Perhaps some people here can post links to potential sites.
Great work again, Matt! This really made my day. Goes along with the legendary "Carousel" video ;-)
Wonderful presentation and repair. This video was a great way to finish the day. Much appreciated!
My dad was a Man Utd fan back in the 80s and kept a lot of the football programmes he accumulated. They're mostly interesting to me because of the ads for various Sharp products (Sharp being their sponsor at that time). The ads for the VZ2000 really stuck out to me. It had a tagline that read "No need to change over at half time" or something like that. I'll have to see if I can dig one out.
I have a Man U SHARP soccer kit - shirt, shorts and socks. Ryan Giggs was my favourite player in those days.
"And now it is time for Sound Charades, based upon the popular fast paced TV show Give Us A Clue. Of course the undoubted star of the show was Lionel Blair, who in his later years became a big fan of hi-fi and would often repair vintage stereo equipment. He would often recall his attempt to repair a record playing boom box, explaining the sheer pleasure he had pulling off 12 knobs, really giving them a hard yank just to get things blasting." Edit - part of me regrets posting this - the other part of me is glad to think of dear old Humph again. Apologies to anyone who read this and doesn't get the reference.
Great looking machine and superb video. An astonishing amount of patience must be needed for a repair job like that!
Great video as always lovely machine would love one. A question you may get is what did it sound like with new stylus, you mentioned it sounded ropey i believe, presume new stylus improved that as always (reminds me need to get new one for mine)
It sounded just fine - no issues. Due to some reshoots the playback of the records in most of the clips was with the new styluses in place …the PETSCII Robots clip that you can hear was with the new ones too.
As it was marketed for the home, perhaps they moved the controls and tape deck to the front, so they could be accessed when there is a shelf above it.
Brilliant! What a fantastic looking machine.
SO happy this turned out like it did! Great job! Your patience with those fiddly devices astounds me.
Fantastic. Peak Techmoan.
For b-boys who insist on that warm, natural sound of vinyl...and are cautious enough not to throw themselves down on the linoleum so hard that the record skips...
They’d be popping and locking their vertebrae carrying this.
The cd trimming video was an absolute belter. The sort of rhetoric used in the reviews - about sound being more expansive etc - was a dead giveaway that when the actual data was in, there'd be absolutely no difference. Very satisfying indeed.
It wasn’t one of my favourites from a quality/content perspective - I feel it needed tightening up a bit , but it’s done really well. I suppose it’s all about the subject.
Great video, and great fix. That could have very easily gone very badly wrong. Nice job. I'd love one of those to use in my garage (remote from the house), but 10 D cells, wow!
I bet getting it working in full was really satisfying. So much complexity and stress on a job like that.
It was surprise and relief.
What a lovely machine!😍 Also a great repair video with a "happy ending." As to the "phonno" vs. "phoeno" controversy (or is it conTROVersy?) since I've been watching this channel, even as a USAnian I've been pronouncing it as phonno. Maybe that's due to limited experience with stereos and their various inputs & outputs before entering the Techmoaniverse, but just yesterday while shopping on Ebay for a vintage radio, I kept telling myself that I wanted one that has "phonno" jacks in the back to plug in a bluetooth receiver. Another dimension of the Techmoan effect I guess.
I don’t know where I got that pronunciation from - it’s likely to be one of those things that I only read and never heard said out loud. I’m still not convinced I’m wrong.
Look at the size of that boombox! I love seeing all the creative ways manufacturers used to cram turntables into boomboxes, especially attempts like these where every compromise was made on the size of the machine. These things just look so damn cool.
Perfect timing. *presses play* Are you okay under that object...😵😲?
Repair videos are on the list of my favorites - I have learned so much watching them. This one is no exception. I dread replacing styluses because I fear I'll snap something. When you used the string to pull off the knob, I thought to myself, "That'd flip and bop me on the head if I did that." 40lbs - that's significant weight... for the heavier half to take off and attach back on. Stellar work! I can hear that it sounds excellent even through mobile phone/headphones. Maybe someday I will get brave enough to take apart my Marantz cassette deck to replace the belts. New releases: "..if there were any of those worth buying" ... 😆 my thoughts as well. Well done on the epic repair, and well done on the video. Have a great evening. 👍🏻 Edit: and I did notice periodic lighting issues on the video, but I'm sure you did, too, so it's not a bother.
That's my weekend made