Portable Stereo Cassette Radios

[Junk Box Nick]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

I think Prinzsound was the Dixons house brand before Saisho.

I have a Prinz slide projector which dates from the early 70s and came from Dixon's in Birmingham. I remember that this was the only place I ever saw the Prinz brand.

[newlite4]

The Prinzsound is the earliest here and as such is quite interesting . It appears to be a copy of the Sony stereo models from 1975 and seems to be quite well featured. Definitely worth preserving.
Neil

[G6Tanuki]

For some reason I subconsciously associate "Prinz" and "Prinzsound" with the old "Timothy Whites" stores [which were sometime in the late-1970s? subsumed into the Boots empire].

[sexton_mallard]

Today I obtained a Saisho STV890 featuring a 4 1/2 inch black and white TV for £2 at the local car boot. The TV comes up with a lovely bright raster and all functions, even the cassette deck works

I never thought Saisho was of any quality in its day but I am seriously impressed with this little set. The sound quality is good as well. Just needs a clean and a Freeview tuner with a modulator connected...

The set does not have a ordinary coax socket for an aerial but what looks like a 3.5mm jack socket. Is anyone familiar with this type of set?

[ben]

You used to get an adaptor with a jack plug into a coax socket. Should be easy to make one up.

[julie_m]

I always wanted one of those boomboxes with a TV, though of course I could never have afforded it. I tried to console myself with the thought that it probably would get through batteries at an alarming rate anyway .....

[Radio Wrangler]

Prinz was Dixon's house brand when they wanted customers to think that cheap stuff from wherever had been made in Austria or Germany.

As time passed, they switched to a new house brand name that made stuff look like it had been made in Japan. Saisho.

I'm not sure if this wasn't a bit of a home goal. The reassuring names would enhance sales in their respective era, but would also impel the purchasers to expect German and Japanese reliability

David

[Paul_RK]

Well, Prinz items probably were largely from Japan, and dependable enough: Japan seems the most likely origin for the one pictured. I can't venture an opinion as to Saisho reliability, but by that stage most real Japanese brands had taken their mainstream production facilities elsewhere in the never-ending search for lower costs.

Paul

[sexton_mallard]

My Saisho STV890 is badged as 'Made in Taiwan ROC'. I wonder if this was a badge engineered product?

[paulsherwin]

Saisho stuff could come from anywhere but most did come from Taiwanese OEMs - this was the era when most of the world's small consumer electronics came from there. Some of the later units came from Malaysia and Singapore. Dixons switched to the Matsui brand (even more Japanese) around the time their sourcing switched to China.

Saisho stuff could be anything from very good to unusable junk. I have a Saisho early 90s small world radio which has given good service and remains in use.

[ben]

Thre was at least one 21" Matsui CRT TV that was a Grundig in disguise. Circa 1992-1994.
No idea how they managed to get a decent chassis and then sell at their typical price point - the competition after all were using the likes of Onwa or other dirt cheap stuff from outside Europe.

[Maarten]

That Grundig in disguise may have actually been a French set made in the Gooding (former Continental Edison or Thomson or ) factory in Creutzwald that survived for a few years on its own with help of Grundig and one or two other large customers. In that case, it sported the a-typical G1000 chassis and likely a picture tube sourced from SDIG (Samsung Berlin). One of the last efforts by Grundig to push manufacturing cost down while not shopping in the East (near or far).

[ben]

Apart from the G1000 there appears to have been several Matsui Grundig rebadges, according to t'internet. For future reference here they are:

14V1R - Grundig CUC7301.
201R/20V 1R /20V1T - GRUNDIG CUC7301, cuc7303
21V1N GRUNDIG CUC7350
21V1T GRUNDIG CUC7303
28DPL GRUNDIG CUC2040, CUC2030
28WN GRUNDIG CUC2059
28WV2DP GRUNDIG CUC2059N ST70-875
32WV2DP GRUNDIG CUC2058
32WV2N GRUNDIG CUC2059N

[Maarten]

Thanks for that! Those all seem to be late 1990's sets, so after the G1000 adventure.

Correction on my previous post: The Gooding factory was a former Grundig factory. Continental Edison was the name the new owner of the plant used after it went bankrupt.

[emeritus]

The Sharp models I have seen have had AC erase heads rather than permanent magnet erase. I have an excellent Sharp cassette radio that I managed to find in a charity shop when looking for recorders with AC erase and an input for an external mike to eliminate motor noise for voice recording after my trusty EL3302 gave up the ghost .

[saxmaniac]

I am amazed at the abuse that a Sharp late 80's blaster has endured at my hands. It is a cheap nasty made in Malaysia model and has been everything from a building site radio to a music room tool for transcription involving multiple rewinds stops starts etc and it refuses to die. Generally for quality though Jap stuff as early as possible before the competition forced manufacturers to cut costs and quality

[Andrew2]

I always had a liking for the Sharp GF-8080. ralatively small and chunky, very sturdily made and sounded remarkably good, a nice solid sound.

[sp10mk11]

My first job in 1975 was at Dixons, and remember only too well Prinzound which covered most of there value for money range, they also had Chinon for there hi-fi and SLR camera ranges. They also sold main manufacturers audio but could never compete on price with say Comet or laskys.
But for me it was great being able to go into work and play with all sorts of equipment.

I also have a collection of Radio Cassettes from the 1970s, I have most of the Sharp GF range(2000, 3000, 4000, 6000 8080, 9090, 525) which in the early days were well built and good sounding units towards the end of the 70s features were taking over and Sharp build quality was going down a bit.
My absolute favourite out of all of them is a Sony CF-580 stereo cassette radio, it is built to hi-fi standards and sounds more like a small hi-fi system than a loud raucous ghetto blaster, I have had that one since 1982 bought from Brick Lane market in London for £12.00, it had a blown power supply due to being set on the wrong voltage, I got that sorted out with a perfect sized toroidal transformer and over the years slowly improved it a little with tweaks here and there, other than the normal Sony rec/ply switch problems it works perfectly.

[Okto1984]

I actually had the same Bush machine many years ago. Unfortunately, even with careful enough use the tape buttons went weird and vanished inside the machine. Whatever they were attached to just wasn't durable enough. So, if you use it, be very careful!

[TrevorM6TSE]

If you want do get rid of the last Toshiba then do let me know! I love it ��