u/No-Sleep1981

May 1984: Sony was selling cassette decks like the CD era had already rewritten the room.

The cover is pure DigicDeck theater: digital meters, CD graphics, tape labels, and a cassette deck presented almost like a new digital format. Inside, the TC-FX606R gets the most Sony trick here - Linear Skate loading, where the cassette slides in horizontally on rails, like a CD player. It was only 8 cm thick and cost ¥69,800 - about $290 then, roughly $900 today.

The same foldout still has the serious ES machines: TC-K777ES, TC-K666ES, TC-K555ES II. And then the back page drops a different beast entirely: TC-5550-2, a portable stereo open-reel recorder, 2-track, 19 cm/s, three heads, direct capstan drive, 6.8 kg without batteries. ¥248,000 - about $1,040 then, roughly $3,200 today.

Nakamichi SX C-60, Japan, around 1976.

At first I assumed the two holes in the j-card were meant to show the reels, but they do not line up with them. When the case is closed, the holes reveal parts of the cassette label instead: SX / C-60 / EQ 70us and Nakamichi.

A collector source says these holes were meant to show the product name on the cassette label, possibly allowing the same index card design to be used across variants.

The Nakamichi 700 manual also has a dedicated SX tape selector position and lists Nakamichi SX next to TDK SA.

Has anyone seen the same j-card trick on EX/SX C-90 or other Nakamichi/TDK-made tapes?

This is the VZ-V4, Sharp's top Auto Disc system from February 1982.

The odd part is the hierarchy. Sharp already had the VZ-V2 in 1981, and that one also had automatic both-sides playback. But this catalog gives the "world's first stereo system" claim to the bigger VZ-V4 line.

A vertical record player, cassette deck, FM/AM tuner, amplifier and speakers, all sold as one system. Price was ¥185,000 - about $740 then, roughly $2,450 today.

Standard Radio Corp. was a Tokyo radio maker. In 1966 they entered a manufacturing partnership with Marantz / Superscope. In 1975 the company was renamed Marantz Japan Inc. This leaflet is from that in-between window, when the brand still went by its own name.

The SR-T137FJ is their portable FM/AM with a built-in cassette deck. 13 transistors, 800 mW output, 1.7 kg, four UM-2 cells or a mains adaptor. It shipped with a dynamic mic that had remote transport control on the cable, and a monitor switch that lets you keep listening to the radio while recording onto tape. The little level meter doubles as a battery voltage indicator.

¥22,800 cash, ¥25,900 list (about $63 then / roughly $550 today).

"石" means "stone." In 1960 Japan that was how you counted the transistors in a radio - not "7 transistors," but "7 stones." It's the same character the watch industry stamped on dials for jewel counts: 21石, twenty-one stones - a bigger number on the spec sheet, sold as "better." SANYO's pocket sets here run 6 to 8 stones, superheterodyne, a couple with shortwave.

What's strange is the rest of it. The flagship isn't a radio - it's furniture. The STG consoles put a turntable and a multi-way speaker system inside a wooden cabinet, and the copy calls them "an invitation to the 21st century of sound." Same catalog, same pages: a five-tube radio they hadn't dropped yet, and a reel-to-reel deck that's the single most expensive thing in the book. No cassette anywhere - it wouldn't exist until 1963, of course :) And the logo of Sanyo is not familiar.

STG-400 cabinet ¥44,500, about $125 then, very roughly $1,300 today (¥360 to the dollar back then). The S-21MR reel deck ¥36,000 - around $100 then, ~$1,050 today, more than a whole entry stereo system on its own.

P.S. - this is the oldest catalog I've got in the Museum so far. Not much point linking it, just struck me how far back the paper goes.

The whole catalog argues one thing - that 2-track tape at 38 cm/s is the only serious way to record. The flagships, the A-6100 and A-7030GSL, are built for people who edit tape with a razor: a flip-up head cover so you can mark the splice point with a grease pencil, lockable cue, memory auto-stop.

The odd one out is the A-3340S, a 4-track.

TEAC's SIMUL-SYNC played back the tracks you'd already recorded - through the record head, in sync - while you laid down a new one, so one person could build a four-part arrangement alone. The thing studios did, on a deck in your room, years before the cassette Portastudio made bedroom multitracking normal.

The A-3340S was ¥246,000 in 1974 - about $820 then, roughly $5,000 today.

I've "build" that myself, as there are not any official boxes at all and any aftermarket for 2 helmets.
- Top Rack Compatible with Royal Enfield Backrest for Super Meteor 650 by ZANA-ZI-8350
- China top box from AliExpress in ugly mate black plastic cover
- To polish and paint in proper glossy black as RE original side cases
- a little branding
- soft cushion inside the box

Ready! I've glad to have that for many occasions and different situations, my wife likes the backrest of that.

Sony presents the CDP-101 as the machine that turned compact disc from an ideal into reality.

By June 1985 the same catalog had ES rack players, a separate digital processor, the D-50 portable, the CFD-5 CD/cassette boombox, and CDX car players. Not one product category - a whole system.

The D-50 was ¥49,800 - about $210 then, roughly $670 today. Expensive, but very fast for a format that had only just become consumer audio.

It was damn cold today, +12 C and rain, but never barriers for bikes, you know! Thanks God does not show :)

June 1985 catalog for the KP-880DII and KP-770D. Kenwood's DL motor used oil pressure around the spindle to lock it on the rotation axis, then added quartz PLL on top.

The KP-880DII claimed 0.006% wow/flutter; the cheaper KP-770D claimed 0.008% and kept auto-up. Prices were ¥89,800 and ¥69,800 - about $380 and $290 then, roughly $1,200 and $930 today.

July 1986 Technics catalog. The SL-P1200 was ¥160,000 - about $1,000 then, roughly $3,100 today - and the catalog spends a whole spread justifying the "CD master" name: class AA sample-hold after the D/A stage, separate L/R conversion, a 96th-order digital filter, PCLN output fader, and the FF-1 one-beam pickup.

It was also built like a working tool: 14.5 kg, top-loading, search dial, auto cue, and pitch control up to +/-8%. A 1987 Studio Sound user report described it as a reference player for professional users. Their test unit had apparently fallen down a flight of stairs and still played normally.

JP / Japan Phono Motor was not a hi-fi giant. It was a small Tokyo drivetrain shop selling professional belt-drive turntables for broadcasters and studios.

This 1968 leaflet claims the first use of PTFE bearings in turntables, Du Pont Teflon included, plus fine pitch control in the belt-drive class. Very much the last moment before direct drive changed the room.

Neko Publishing, December 2017, special edition of «Stereo-jidai» magazine. Opens with an Ikujima Noboru × Makino Shigeo dialogue in place of a foreword.

Part one - cassette tapes. Brand stories and full chronologies for Sony, TDK, maxell, FUJI/AXIA, Columbia/Denon, and That's. Separate features on iconic flagships - TDK MA-R 1979, AXIA PS-I/PS-II 1985, maxell Metal Vertex 1989, Sony Super Metal Master 1993. Plus a visit to Matsuzaki Junichi's «Nostalgic Cassette Museum» and a field-recording feature.

Part two - portable players. Three catalog sections totaling 499 models: Sony Walkman 1979-2003 (179 models), AIWA Cassette Boy 1980-2003 (173 models), National Headphone Stereo 1981-2005 (147 models).

Alpha Enterprise, a small Tokyo-Osaka distributor. Four-page leaflet, 26 CDs across four labels - American DELOS (classical), Japanese Real Time (jazz from Freddie Hubbard, Art Pepper, Don Menza, Jack Sheldon, plus Rozsnyai classics), αSound, and Yamaha. Most discs ¥4,000 - about $16 then, roughly $52 today.

The latest recording in the catalogue is Joe Farrell "Sam Day" from March 26, 1982. That same disc is one of five NOW PRINTING placeholders - the jacket art wasn't ready yet. The leaflet must have gone to press just days after. Japan's first CD players, Sony CDP-101 and Denon DN-3000F, shipped on October 1, 1982.

PePe TV was Sharp's 1985 stereo-television line for the youth market - flagship GS-TV5 (TV + cassette deck + tuner in one rack), standalone VG-TV6, and compact CP-TV5. Every model came in red or black, down to the matching speaker cabinets.

UHF and VHF reception both in stereo - which in 1985 was a selling point worth printing on the cover.

Cover talent is Iyo Matsumoto - singer and actress, 80s idol, the same face Sharp had been using on their karaoke catalogs the year before. But on this inner spread three white kittens on the red TV screen, a tiny cat figurine in a polka-dot dress holding a tray with a cocktail glass and a music note - and somehow Matsumoto's two portraits in the corners are doing the supporting role.

Flagship GS-TV5 was ¥130,000 - about $546 then, roughly $1,600 today.

This is the catalog that started the museum for me.

It begins with closed garage doors. Then it opens into different boyish rooms: motorcycles, tools, racing model cars, posters, and a DENON System 80 setup in the middle.

That was the hook. Not one rare component, not a spec sheet, but the whole scene in each room. The catalog sells a place where this stereo belongs, and a person who would want to live with it.

After this one I stopped seeing Japanese audio catalogs as simple product brochures. They became time capsules: rooms, habits, dreams, design choices, and only then the gear itself.

AIWA put the claim right on the cover: world No.1 reverse time.

The R50 was the trick deck here: side A to side B in 0.2 seconds. Same fold-out also had the FF90 with Active Servo Bias and Dolby HX Pro, plus Wonder Double for high-speed dubbing.

Very 1984. Everything had to be faster, smarter, or both.

October 1981 Yamaha catalog, 20 pages.

The amplifier page alone is wild: BX-1 was a 100W Class A mono power amp, ¥330,000 each - about $1,500 then, roughly $5,400 today. So stereo meant two black cubes. Next to it sits the B-6, Yamaha's first X-amp: 200W + 200W, ¥190,000 - about $860 then, roughly $3,100 today - in that strange pyramid body that later ended up in a design museum collection.

Then the speaker pages have NS-1000, NS-1000M, and NS-10M still sitting together as consumer speakers. The NS-10M is not “the famous studio monitor” yet here - just a ¥25,000 bookshelf speaker, about $110 then, roughly $400 today, before the legend happened.

The cassette decks are in that early-80s spec-war zone too: K-1d and K-9 had built-in dbx for metal tape, with Yamaha claiming up to 100 dB S/N on the K-1d. Very serious, very not universal - dbx sounded great when decoded properly, but Dolby B/C won the compatibility war.

And the vinyl side is not quiet either: PX-1 was ¥480,000 - about $2,170 then, roughly $7,900 today - with a linear-tracking arm and a look that feels more 1985 than 1981.

I also like the color split in this catalog: the serious separates are already going black, while the cassette decks are still mostly silver aluminum. One foot in the 70s, one foot in the 80s.

A six-page Matsushita/National catalog from 1971, with a pocket cassette recorder right on the cover.

The booklet still has everything mixed together - cassette recorders, open-reel decks, 8-track decks, microphones and blank tapes - but that cover already points to the thing that would take over the next decade.