Panasonic’s response to the Sony Walkman

A beautiful narrative, Mat. You have illuminated a subject that may have appeared mundane to most, but was, in fact, anything but!

I'm glad you mentioned the headphones. The original Tomorrow's World review of the Walkman when it was "the latest thing from Japan" spent about twenty seconds on the "small cassette player" then about five minutes on the "impressive headphones" going as far as using a spectrum analyser to prove that they were better than conventional headphones many times the size and weight. They then demonstrated the newly developed rare earth magnets making this possible. It is ironic that the later, top of the range, "Boodo Khan" Walkman came with headphones looking like they were from the early 1970s (Google it if you want to see them)

What's your screwdriver Mat? Looks very ergonomic. Come with a carrying case?

Hey Mat, could you list some of the best hardcover coffee table books of consumer product design? Especially Sony stuff. On my credenza I got my TC-D5M and my DD Quartz, what a joy.

Maybe it is a complex bit of kit, because its the first. Subsequent models may have been simplified as they evolved.

Great video as ever.. keep up the good work!

Good info, sir. Even the unhappy ends are beneficial to those of us looking to get or keep ancient tech running. Buying these things new back in the day, serviceability was for old folks to worry about…oh yeah thats me now 😂

Just Another Excellent Video, good sir. Nothing like demonstrating an exercise in futility. It was not difficult to tell the aggravation level rising.

I purchased one on eBay to try restoring. Really do want to see the sound quality assessment. See how Panasonic compares. I'll send it to you if I get it working. Maybe you can sell it after review with proceeds going towards more tech show and tell on your channel.

I would be happy to purchase this for what you paid, and attempt to fix it. If I can, I will send it back to you. I would love to hear your review on sound quality wow and flutter.

Where can I buy a smart hat, I gotta get in on this.

another product from the deadalus school of design

You could say the same about the iPod. Portable digital players had existed for over a decade. Apple's genius was to pair it with an online store, and a very nice GUI.

So pleased your medical trial might be bearing fruit. Delighted to hear it and long may it continue.

Smart Hat is funny as hell.

People who purchased this belt repair kit also searched for "sledgehammer"! So glad you posted this, sometimes the story of a fail makes it a win.

I feel so sorry for the poor sods who had to put them together in the factory

'Frequently Asked Questions' is a good addendum if it is read - every time I see a comment about shipping something off for someone else to fix I think to myself, "hasn't he already said in the past there's no point in doing that for valid reasons" and have to resist replying as such. 🤐

I enjoyed the video, and I do understand the frustration. As you said, this thing was clearly not designed with maintenence in mind... I wonder what the thinking was On a different but related note. I would be grateful for a recommendation of a "toolkit" or at least a screwdriver set. I do have one or two sets that are mixed up and chewed and when I have to do a proper job, I know what can't I take. I'd like a small "electronic set" to do small things around.

Wonder if your sense of taste will change as a result of the trial! I've wondered before if not being able to taste fully affects your mental health at all?

Mat, I really enjoyed this one, and despite the outcome not being ideal, it does demonstrate the difference even back then in philosophy in regard to repairability. Alas, even by the 70’s, I am sure within the consumer market, there was a drive to get as many products out there, and not worry too much about the long term use and how to fix it. Just take Amstrad as an example in the early 80’s and all the tat they produced. It’s funny how we have come full circle with the current “right to repair” movement gaining momentum and that we cannot just manufacture one time use products.

...and despite what anyone says, today's hard-to-repair tech is harder than anything from the 70s or 80s. Case in point - broken flex cable in a Google Pixel Slate wired keyboard

Matt, from the number of folks asking you to send them your failed repair, you should buy a few more, break them and sell them as merch on your website ;-)

I'm really wondering how to put those ribbon cables back... A lot of stuff from the 1970s until the early 1980s is very difficult to repair in my experience... I had once a receiver from a colleague to repair, needed some deoxit in the potentiometers, loosening the tuning cap and the worst thing: replacement of some light bulbs: these nasty incandescents had melted their own mounting post away completely! Never designed to be operated as long as it lasted until now... I managed to replace them with some LED constructions, but also needed to do some very awkward soldering on too short leads, it was a pain...

Is be happy to watch you take apart convoluted Japanese electronics all day.

Love the idea of taking a photo and printing it to tape the screws! This is one thing I will think of doing when all the screws are different. Love the video, well worth the effort.

I have an RQ-J9, one of Panasonic's other early Walkman-clones, which they called "Stereo-To-Go". I recently showed it in the intro to my video about the Sony transistor radio. It has the opposite problem: mechanically it works fine -- the original belts are still intact -- but I don't get any audio out of it, not even a hiss or buzz. I'm also dreading taking it apart and trying to repair it, so I think I'll just keep it as a semi-functional prop.

Oh. Em. Eff. Gee. That was horrific. Definitely a one-way assembly. Quite apart from the inability to service the mechanism, how the hell did Matsushita ever assemble these in the first place? *And* make a profit??

Reminds me of a Ferguson computer cassette player I tried to "fix", when it didn't actually need it. It played perfectly, the belts hadn't perished, but muggins here thought it would be a good idea to replace it anyway due to age. So I did. It's now got noticeable motor noise I can't fix. Just keep this information under your smart hat.

Hey @mat do you still have the failed repair unit? I'll buy it off you and have a crack at it 👍

Dumb question, but here you go... Is it IMPOSSIBLE go through the front of the device to get at the belts? I mean, I can't imagine it being harder than gong through the back layer-by -agonizing-layer! Slightly-less dumb question (maybe) Any chance you might look a direct drive device cassette player in the future? I see Sony even made a few portables. I assume the price would be off-putting.

It may have been a failed, if valiant, repair attempt, but it is incredibly valuable from a historical perspective for you to have done a partial tear-down of the device because of what it says about the maximalist ethos of electronic's manufactures of the time. As you rightly noted early on, electronics companies did not know which features were likely to "stick" with consumers during a time of market transition to modular and portable devices. So they threw as much as they could into their initial market offerings. Your repair attempt is kind of like an archeology of the attitudes and sentiments of a time when the smartest people in consumer electronics were unsure what the near-term market was going to demand. So but by going layer-by-layer into the guts of the thing, you provide tremendous insight into late 20th century consumer culture. OR... maybe you and Mr. Puzzle get together and design a very tedious new brain teaser for the anorak market!

It is fascinating to imagine Walkman circa 1975. John Travolta would be grooving to music as he walked down the street in Saturday Night Fever (thus completely devaluing the City as the source of his "beat.") I am so curious about what was missing from the culture when there was nothing missing in existing technology. The transistor radio was well-and-truly ensconced in the market by the mid to late 1960s. Compact cassettes were already established by the 1970s. And, as you clearly show Mat, mono cassette recorders were clearly available. In fact, my dear old Christian Science granny gifted me a battery operated cassette player that had a port for an earpiece so I could listen to to bible lectures (and definitely NOT audio recordings of Dr. Demento taped from Sunday night radio!). So why the blindspot? Could it be that what had not been establshed was the concept that someone wanted to listen to music ON THEIR OWN without a wider audience while they were on the go? The concept of listening with headphones was around but wasn't that something you did in the HOME while parked near the media device itself? Didn't that look and feel more like a concentrated activity like studying? Surely, no one could "appreciate" music if they were doing other things, right?

Flippin' 'eck! That's the cassette player equivalent to a car that needs the engine taken out to replace a timing belt. Fair play to you for getting as far as you did, Mat.

Very cool indeed, what a neat device! I suspect MyMateVince would be thrilled to do collabs with you on repairs, and you're both UK so postage wouldn't be anything like sending it to the US. I'm impressed with how far your repair skills have come, tbh, I remember the very early videos :D

As someone who has had far more failures than successes, I love these videos...

Thanks for the video. If you are interested, I have the patience to swap the belts and solder the ribbon cable for just the postage to me.

Loved the video! May I ask what type of touchscreen device you're using to look at the manual? It looks incredibly useful.

Hey Matt, loved the video! If the broken one is just sitting around, I'd love to take a look at it, I've repaired some pretty fiddly things on my channel and off-screen so I'd definitely be up for the challenge. No worries if not, and great work on the video, glad you're feeling better.

Nice Matt, very entertaining. You used to get a "fake cassette" with a tape head inside and cable that plugged into your portable CD player to play CDs in your car (before cars had CD players) - useful to test playback in decks with snapped belts.

I think you're right, the edit could be tighter. But it's also pretty much fine. Wouldn't have occurred to me if you didn't say something. I did like the drama of the repair. It really keeps us in suspense like KTB said above. I knew shit got real when you got out the paper. Same for me. If I have to do that I pretty much know it'll be a rough one. But the drama is good because sometimes you DO miraculously fix stuff. Even complicated stuff. Then you figure out the problem but it still doesn't work and then you actually fix it later. It's good TV. But not all the time. Don't listen too much to us patrons as we love everything.

Welcome to Panasonic "walkman" repair. They are all somewhat like this. I've repaired a few Panasonic RQ-SX models. And they all involve desoldering quite a few bits to get to the middle where the mechanism is hidden. As soon as you remove the board the clutch spring flies into your face (the plastic retaining pieces break due to age). But despite it being fiddly and annoying it is doable. It does require a massive amount of patience. And you can get replacement parts easily. This is unlike Sony... where the belts are usually accessible... but then they use special clutch gears that crack, but nobody makes replacements.

I read somewhere that there is a Lambourgini that you have to pull the engine in order to change the oil filter. This is like that.

Why on earth did they bother with a tape counter? Great video, and I've swapped plenty of belts in tape / minidisc, but this would beat the very best of us. Definitely one to avoid!

I've not noticed any issues with your speech before, and wouldn't mind anyway as long as we got those sweet old/new tech deep dives. Glad you're happy with the meds though.

Oh my I feel your pain on that one. I'm also glad you have the wherewithal to edit it to something palatable anyway (so many creators have no idea about pacing, and as such, their channels don't grow much.) My latest was a project to build a hot-water tank controller [details omitted for length] and it started with innumerable trips to the basement to make a prototype, then approximately the same number of trips to get the damn circuit board-version to work. Unfortunately, it was more important than getting to hear yet-another unimpressive-sounding stereo tape player. Makes me want to suggest making a fake cassette where the wheels just move on their own to make it look like you fixed it. :) I doubt anybody would be able to tell that the playback quality is any different from a similar model, but leave it to the limitless cumulative time of Internet viewers to prove me wrong.

Great video, and good news on the medical trials. [It sounds like you’re closer to your ‘old’ self, and that you enjoy talking once more.] If I may bend your ear on a transformative experience that involved this device, and like your attempt to repair, you might think this way too long: I distinctly remember back in the Summer of 1980. I was finishing up my undergraduate degree in vocal performance at Oklahoma City University. I was in the habit of frequenting a small Hi-Fi store that was in strip shopping center a few blocks from school. One day when I went in the owner was trying out the original Walkman he’d just received and asked if I wanted to hear it. I put the foam-padded headphones on and… wow! I couldn’t believe it! It wasn’t the sound, I had a much better set of headphones connected to my stereo in the dorm. But the sound was almost as good and the idea that it was coming from this small little device you could literally carry anywhere caused me to flip out, (I think that’s what we said at the time). I would have bought it then and there, but the owner wanted $100 for it and I just didn’t have the money. Fast forward one year. In the summer of 1981 I had been given a stipend for performing in a summer music camp in Arkansas called “Inspiration Point Arts Colony.” I was hired to sing Don Jose in Carmen. It started in late June and ran the rest of the summer. I had never forgotten that original Walkman and thought it would be perfect. At the colony we all stayed in these cabins and rustic dorms that hardly had electricity and nothing else. I went back to the store, but instead of buying the Walkman I bought what I’m pretty sure was the Panasonic RX-2700. I liked the fact that it had a radio and a speaker for my little cabin. I loved that near-Walkman and was the envy of the camp. I still remember spending my off days at a nearby beach, sunning myself and listening to Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire. As I said, it was a transforming experience. Thanks for bringing back a wonderful memory.

Reminds me of the reputation Japanese cars had back in the day. Well built and reliable, but when it does eventually break, it's cheaper to buy a new one than to fix it

I love the Panasonic catalogue. It’s the sort of thing you just don’t see these days and mores the pity. I do understand that it wastes inordinate amounts of paper but there’s something magical about thumbing through a proper catalogue of desirable products that (as a child) I knew I could never afford and seeing what real money money could buy. I guess that was one of the reasons the original laminated book of dreams (bill baileys descr of the Argos catalogue) was so popular with people. I had many of these catalogues and used to collect them along with car brochures, the tech in them was fascinating and a screen just doesn’t seem the same. Thanks Mat really enjoyed this one.

Great video, when I try and fail to fix modern smartphones I keep thinking how old stuff was made to be repaired. Thanks for reminding me there always existed stuff that was bolted together under the assumption that's how it would remain.

That certainly looked a nightmare to get back together with the belt replacement but I must admit if I saw one cheap enough I would now get it as a challenge as I've done some pretty difficult repairs in the past. 😃

• I'm pleased to read that your med trial seems to be improving your condition; many happy hopes that the results get better and better along the way. • I love both the paper and video advertisements you inserted in here. I wonder what special effects (fishing line) they may have used to stand up all those headphones. • Smart Hat made me laugh out loud, very loud, at 4:45 AM. Sorry neighbors 😋. • Don't ever think this repair attempt a failure because we all got to see how Panasonic smooshed this together. I would have loved to see the assembly line for these. How many workers in total put this together, I wonder? And tiny tiny hands. • Yay, there's old blue eyes again. • I mean, really - they never meant this thing to be repaired, ever. It's madness.

Great video. You should do a collaboration with Mend it Mark on YouTube, I have a feeling he could get it sorted.

I think I have an RQ J6. Awaiting repair, and missing its slide-in battery caddy. I must get 'round to repairing it. Edit: I watched the rest of the video. I won't be trying to repair it.

I guess that Panasonic needed to make it that way in order to get the desired form factor. A stereo radio/cassette player doubtless needed a lot more electronic components in 1981 than one made in the 1990s, so to make a portable device it had to be completely crammed.

Airpods. Look like teeny tampons hanging off your ears.

Good stuff, Mat. As you said in the vid, these things weren't really designed with belt replacement in mind. A shame but then lots of these personal stereos are a bit of a nightmare inside!

Are you planning to do anything on the new walkmans, or are they too samey to the ones you reviewed a few years back to bother? Glad to hear the trial might be working! Especially after the last one was a dud.

It’s so bizarre looking but also, quite familiar? It reminds me a bit of the stretch Walkman or the technics co-deck if it had a radio aerial and speaker? Anyways, another great video as always and glad to hear you’re feeling better Mat!

Interesting. It’s amazing how simple the Walkman appeares in hindsight. That thing is a production nightmare - how they managed to build what looks like a quality product at a sensible price is impressive. 🤞 with the treatment - it is noticeable.