Sony ceases production of tape Walkman in Japan after 30 years..

Run_to_da_hills

"More than 200 million sales later and 30 years after the world's first personal stereo system was launched, Sony has stopped selling the cassette tape Walkman in Japan".



No harm and I am surprised that they have not stopped sales globally. It amaizes me that people still use this horrible music format. You never see DJ's using it any more, I dumped my entire cassette collection a number of years ago as most of them were stretched or distorted from over playing. I also had several of Sony's models including the D6 Professional which is still somewhere around the house.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8085213/Sony-stops-selling-tape-Walkman-in-Japan-after-30-years.html

Dudess

There were Christmas presents of two massive brick ones in our house in 1985 - one was red, the other silver. Neither were for me though - probably considered too young.
In 1991, I got my first one for my 13th birthday - it was much smaller and sleeker and more minimalist. It was black and had a great sound. So I guess I got the better deal.
Most of my tapes are thrown out too - I have two or three left though. The devastation when a tape broke when you were a kid. Whereas now it's just a case of re-ordering it online/re-downloading it.

lord lucan

I had one of these around 1988. I think i won it in a Coca Cola competition iirc.

SEPT 23 1989

Had one of these in red

http://cgi.ebay.ph/Sanyo-M-GP9-Walkman-1980s-Retro-Cassette-Player-/160474429752#ht_500wt_949

Run_to_da_hills

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Had one of these in red

http://cgi.ebay.ph/Sanyo-M-GP9-Walkman-1980s-Retro-Cassette-Player-/160474429752#ht_500wt_949

Thats a Sanyo.

The term "Walkman" was copyrighted by Sony, just like the term "Hoover" became synonymous with vacuum cleaners. Walkman seemed to cover all personal cassette players.

Capt'n Midnight

Compact cassette has lasted a long time, far longer than Sony's proprietary formats
- Betamax
- minidisk
- memory stick

Sony had nice electronics but the physical boxes weren't so nice still it took standard media so you didn't have to pay about twice the price for proprietary media.

there was even a tape to tape walkman LOL

casette is a poor format, but if you don't have access to a computer ...

Thomas828

I have mixed feelings about the Walkman. On one hand it proved very useful when I was out doing my shopping and I didn't want to listen to the muzak piped over the store's PA system. As for the smaller shops, their radios were usually tuned to BBC Radio 1 or Downtown Radio, and pop music in the late 80s wasn't much to get excited about. I was into jazz and classical music at the time and that's what I listened to as I walked around Belfast.

I still have a Walkman, but I hardly ever use it, mainly because I get really annoying feedback whenever I pass someone using a mobile phone and when I pass through the security scanners in a store. The mp3 player in my mobile phone is much handier and I get almost no outside interference.

Oh, and the headphones that came with the Walkman in the 80s were a joke. The wire was really stiff and couldn't be straightened out. And they were so fragile. I lost count of how many pairs I broke between 1984 when I got my first Walkman and 1991 when I left Belfast.

On the whole, I won't miss the Walkman.

Rainbow_brite

have to say its one piece of technology I won't miss, I remember having to carry around a bag of cassettes, a packet of AA batteries along with the walkman. I also remember the horror when the batteries ran out at the worst possible time and I was nowhere near a shop to restock!

Floppy disks were also annoying rattling away in my rucksack in college. Students don't know how easy they have it with their extra thin mp3 players and memory sticks

rubadub

Dudess wrote: »

The devastation when a tape broke when you were a kid.

I went through loads of cheap walkmen.

I remember having to carry around a biro, listening away and then you hear a dreaded sound, press stop eject and it was like a joke can of springy snakes -crumbled up tape flying out everywhere!

You would stick the biro into the winder thing and spin the tape around and around reeling back in the messed up tape.

I had a fancy one which let you change the speed it played at, a few mates were into DJ'ing and were amazed at it. The same one could also record and you could turn the mic on while listening to music, so you could hear things going on around you.

Capt'n Midnight

rubadub wrote: »

I remember having to carry around a biro, listening away and then you hear a dreaded sound, press stop eject and it was like a joke can of springy snakes -crumbled up tape flying out everywhere!

You would stick the biro into the winder thing and spin the tape around and around reeling back in the messed up tape.

LOL at the biro - how many times did I do that ?

and I had one walkman and if you pushed the button just right you could listen to the radio while rewinding the tape
the other trick was pushing the play button half way in while rewinding, so you could hear the music at turbo speed and stop at the gap right at the start of the song


course there were two problems with NiCAD rechargable batteries, one was that when they ran out they just died, if it happened in a gap between songs you wouldn't even hear the tape slowing down , it would just stop before the next one. The other problem was that if you had one in your pocket and it got shirt circuited by a coin you 'd feel a warming sensation in your pocket, this would be followed by a dance where you'd have only a few seconds to get it out before you got burnt

Ghost Train

I still have these three walkmans, not sure if they still work
edit: one or two problems, but they all seem to still work


WM-EX552

WM-FX403

WM-B10