What a delightful piece of junk, haha. Loved seeing all the cheap trickery inside.

That poor, poor thing. It waited 20 years in the darkness, then as soon it was taken out it was butchered for our entertainment.

I'm not going to lie, that weird galactic cyber-warfare sound it had while playing the two tapes at once is the best thing about this.

I want a round of applause, this is the first cheap boombox with an actual tweeter!!

"The graphic equalizer will give you the choice of it either sounding dreadful,...or terrible." That line absolutely cracked me up!! Love your videos, keep it up!!

I used to have the best boombox EVER. The lubricant on the doors had gunked up so the doors took OVER A MINUTE to open up!

I received a JVC PC-150 for my 16th bday in 1985. It still kickin along today, relegated to dusty garage radio duty. Faithfully delivering it's tired flat sounds, daily. I'm still amazed by its seemingly bullet proof construction, and it's amazing resilience in terms of total life span. Hats off to JVC, because the word "die", doesn't seem to be in this unit's vocabulary. It even has SW1 & SW2. Which seems to be devoid of anyone broadcasting anything these days

There's something so nostalgic about cheap tape being played on an even cheaper tape player. Takes me right back to childhood.

PMPO is "Purely Mythical Power Output"

I'm really not too sure why so many people have decided to explain to me how continuous play operates....I don't recall saying I didn't understand it....and of course I do (how could anyone not...the description of the function is in the name). On this deck the far left piano key operates the continuous play feature. I didn't demonstrate continuous play in the video because it's just not interesting enough to spend any time on.

"if you throw it off a cliff"... that had me laughing out loud... just discovered your channel... great videos!

The crazy sound effects created by playing both tapes together makes that boom box actually worth the price IMO! It just sounds like a lot of fun to mess with…I’d lose hours mixing sounds of tapes together, and creating some crazy messed up tape speed sound effects!

I would have still used that for a party-basement where stuff could get damaged. And after the 3rd or 4th beer you don't mind the quality anymore. ;)

This is why people think Marketing is about lying to consumer. Nice video, mate.

"the best thing we can do with this machine is take it apart" LMAO

National: Just Slightly Ahead of Our Time International: Just Slightly Behind of Our Time

I like your mentioning the whole "the medium is only as good as its playback hardware" phenomenon, because the same thing happened with CDs. Most portable CD players that first came out on the market (or even home receivers for that matter), as I understand it, used things like underspeced digital-to-analog converters to save cost, and it made CDs sound worse than they really were.

8 Watts and a fake button, you could not ask for more. :-D

Text everywhere, lots of buttons, lights all over the front, big, and low quality sound. Perfect

I love my silver Sony boombox! Fixed speakers, single cassette deck, no gimmicks! Just awesome sound! Thing is probably older than me. Paid a hundred pounds for it in 2009. Takes eight D cell batteries.

I lost it when you play both simultaneously.

I live for shite 80s electronics like this.... Check out all that Hot snot on the circuit boards. That crazy aussie bloke would have a field day.

i had this exact model and used it for my computer speakers for a ling time. Brings me back.

Throughout my high school years, I had both the JVC RCM-70-JW and later the RCM-90. These things rocked! Me and my friend used to go to these tunnels (storm drain from a golf course to the lake) powering it with a car battery because the 10 "D" cells never lasted long at the volumes we used to play it at. While I don't have those ghetto blasters any more, I still have a JVC Kaboom that was made in 1998, and it not only rocks, but it works perfectly.

sometimes I'd spend hours going through the Argos catalogue just dreaming of things i wanted to buy.

Send it to the guy who runs the "Hydraulic Press Channel".

Lol... the reel-to-reel cassette tape he use in this video probably cost more than the whole unit...

I just subscribed to your channel. Been casting to my tv all evening. So many memories. I used to (try and) repair these in my last years of high school and my college years. For friends that is. Never had one myself. I remember the mainboards of these cheapo's were so badly soldered, some of the (badly) printed connections were re-done (in the factory I suppose) using wires. When you opened it up, you found these wires glued to the inside of the case...: Detaching (I mean simply moving around, not even disconnecting) one to get to the mainboard, often led to irreparable grounding issues (worse than the noise you demonstrate above) because of interference through the wires which weren't supposed to be there in the first place. The king of these cheapo's (lowest tier possible) here in Belgium was a brand from the far East called "Tokyo" (sometimes also called Tsuru, with the same logo). Their logo was a trident. What I mean with "Far East" is that some of their stuff came from Singapore, others from Malaysia, China, Korea....but never from Japan (probably already too expensive back then). However, if I remember correctly (it's more than 30 years ago): At the heart of these boombox devices, whether it be a low-tier Tsuru/Tokyo or a more renowned brand, was very often the same "integrated amplifier IC": STK-something. (something = a number I really don't remember :-) If you come across a Tokyo or a Tsuru, leave it, unless indeed it's just for 'set decorating' :-). I bought my mum an Aiwa in 1997: Still works as a charm: CD, radio, cassette all in good order after 23 years. Aiwa imho was one of the better, let's say 'mid-tier' brands in that era, especially for cassette based stuff, like boomboxes and portable cassette players. Sony bought 'em up and closed them down...for obvious reasons. Keep up the cool work!

Me and my friends all had one of these... and yep, they did sound terrible! BUT... it's all we could afford, so we loved them!

You should get a P.O. Box so we can send you stuff to review. lol

5:52 Nice feature. It lets you know when to start recording the backup for a show.

Way late response: Continuous Play is supposed to allow the first tape deck to play all the way thru, then the second plays after the first stops. To make it work, you had to press play on the second deck and CP buttons at the same time, then play on the first deck. It sorta "loaded" the play button on deck two to engage when the first deck auto stopped. I remember seeing many units that had the fake CP buttons though, or for whatever reason they did not work. Just another feature copied from a higher end unit that they could print on the box.

The double deck weird glitch was actually something that made me want it 😊

Haha man the memories! My cousin had THIS EXACT THING but I remember it to sound mighty fantastic since I was very jealous. The same FD letters and flat looking speakers and all. He used to blast Chris De Burgh's Missing You on a loop for hours. Good old 80s.

Bought an Aiwa CA25 back in 1987. Went until 1991 when the belt failed. Got a replacement recently and it goes like new and used in the kitchen.

OMG @0:31"transform you from being wack to being fresh". Dead.

This boombox is an imitation of the Sharp WF-939Z! While looking through a few vids, I came across the Sharp WF-939Z and I thought... why does this system look so familiar? Not too long after, I remembered this video, and I must say, this is indeed some cheap imitation of Sharp....

I laughed when the cassette door just exploded its way to open

Thank you for the in depth review. Like you said, back in the day audio equipment like this boombox was the gateway that lead us into being audio enthusiasts today. Not many audiophiles will admit that now though so I salute you realizing and telling the truth about how you got into the audio hobby - good job! (I wish that more audiophiles today would admit their humble beginnings into their passion for audio equipment. It would bring their feet back down to earth with us commoners.) For those that don't know, this International IT-939 is a copy of the Sharp WF-939. The Sharp is pretty highly regarded amongst boombox collectors. You can easily tell the difference because the WF-939 has a bright green LED spectrum analyzer on the front.

Brilliant review. I love techmoan's objectivity! Clear and informative.

You could describe a tin of paint and I would find it interesting and I would watch

Those are actually reproductions of the SHARP WF939 Labeled as New Old Stock, claiming they were supposed to go to different stores Like Radioshack Dixon etc. There new, and garbage. There a 100s of these type of boomboxes on eBay

Thank you for the trip of nostalgia. I miss these days sometimes!

hey I had one of those machines. it accompanied me and a girlfriend on a road trip from Dayton Ohio, to San Francisco. It was very good for hiding weed in the large battery compartment.

the door on the deck 2 came out fast because it was "hi-speed".. haha! ok, that was lame. I'm gonna shut up right now.

My favourite piece of superfluous text has got to be "INTERNATIONAL" on the cassette deck. What is it supposed to even be referring to?

This is fantastic and you had me nodding and smiling in agreement at all the observations re what us teenage boys wanted from our stereos. And i too used to love looking through the shops little catalogues dreaming of what i could have. great video.

The 80s were fun for this sort of thing. The boxy systems were far more interesting than the splodges that came in the 90s. Saisho and Matsui were Dixon's own brands and not much cop but Phillips/Pye, Sharp, Sony, Hitachi etc made some good things. I had a single tape deck Super Woofer.

Its a fake/copy of Sharp WF939.I seen the guts of the original.Its nothing like this.

*TRACK NAMES* A lot of people have asked for the names of the music tracks. These are now in the *Video Description Text Box*

I thought I had dynamic speakers all this time. You've changed my life.

I loved my boombox, you crushed my nostalgia bro 😂, guy in 2020 trolling 1990 tech. Anyways great look inside and out of a retro boombox. 👍 you should check out 70s tvs with vac tube and oak wood panels.

The actual drivers in the speakers look as if they could sound pretty nice in a set of designed enclosures. Real cone tweeter & a fair sized magnet for a 8 watt speaker! Would probably do very well in a 100v line speaker setup. :)

These are my favorites, you actually taking things apart, analyzing, see if a fix can be made to improve etc. My results have always been "sorry, I broke it!"

Your channel is awesome. I enjoy seeing all the cool gadgets you find and your very informative descriptions of each. thanks!

My father still ones and uses one. It is the coolest shit on earth! He has it in his workshop and he is always there in the late evenings. So it's dark, those big wing doors are open, the light in shining outside and the 90s music can be heared all over our yard

This video made me laugh more than most comedies. "Dad Test" Brilliant.

my dad owned a Lasonic huge boom box with two tape decks, 10 inch subs on each side.... it was awesome.

I've only just discovered this channel and it's my new addiction... right up my street!

Your videos are awesome. always great for some insight into some less known tech. Also the part about the toy car going 100 miles an hour had me cracking up. Keep these awesome vids coming.

Techmoan is fantastic , who in their right mind would watch a 10 min video of an obsolete , utterly useless pile of retro junk. ME! hell its Cheaper than Therapy. Teachmoan continues to rock solid.

3:24 Aaaahhh... that was really hilarious :) "too keen to open"

Got a glimpse of my old Pioneer FT-1250 there, - brings back memories . . . . .💓

I actually remember this junky stereo. What a “blast from the past”. Wow.

I lost it with the toy car over the cliff comment.

classic LADA was great... I've got one in those olegoodtimes)))

Lot of great memories here! I had a Sharp WQ-T352 back in the days... Cool video !!!

On the authentic SHARP WF939Z version looks like the center piano key is a working "Dubbing Start" button, and the covered center holes held switches for tape direction and reverse mode. It also has a fancy "Spectrum Analyzer" in place of the Sound Level Meter.

still using the Panasonic RX-C45. and still sounds good. but i did need to recap it.

made a back pack of a similar one in 89' running on batteries . was LMAO at myself on 04:28 "absolutely terrible. great video.

I remember I used to actively search for broken, discarded Boomboxes back in the '80's and repairing them. I had some of the best out there. I wish I still had a few cause their selling today for (an authentic retro) $1000-$5000. I'm 50years old now and still on the lookout for discarded, broken things like PC's. Great Video!

I scored a few heavy hitter boomboxes on ebay years ago - glad I did! Most are working with just a few small faults here and there gradually being addressed.

Another embarrassing trip down memory lane. When the measure of a stereo system was how many lights and buttons it had! Ugg. lol😃

This car goes at 100mph *IF YOU THROW IT OFF A CLIFF!!*

I cannot believe they have gone up in value like this. My God!!

One of the funniest videos I’ve seen in weeks. Absolutely brilliant.

At least the EQ sliders are separate. I had a cheapo box with an "8 band" equalizer that was actually 4 band.

Hello Mr.Techmoan i have real Sharp WF-939 from 86-90th. It has fantastic sound. Middle button on real thing actually works its a dubbing button, was very useful back in a day. Also real WF-939 has 8 ohms speakers . And overall build quality is realy good. One day you should revisit boombox video and compare fake on - knockoff in the video with real Sharp WF-939 i guarante you will be suprised!

that really takes me back! i miss those days

Just wanted to thank you for your videos. Been watching for a while now, and going through your channel watching older videos. I enjoy the way you present things, and the devices you feature are always interesting and cool. Despite the vast global distance between us, I'd wager that we grew up with similar interests, and at about the same time. When you talk about experiences with electronics from your childhood, it brings back many memories of my own past. And, you pick some damned good music during your demos... always dropping in some JBs or 80s hiphop... Anyway, thank you! P.S. Depite it being completely cliche, I have to throw in the obligatory, "I love your accent."

I think (but I'm not too sure) that "Continuous Play", meant that you could press play on both tapes, but only one would play, then when it finished, the other tape would play.

thing is...if one looks around around there is still modern versions of this sort of "junk" being sold nowadays; especially around/on "Black Friday"

I had one of these back in early 90's, but it was little bit diffrent model and sounded not bad. In fact mine was built good enough so it lasted for decades. I think it still works.

When I was 13 I saved up and bought a Hitachi TRK-W55K - Jeez I loved that thing. With my TDK MA-XG60 cassettes and a haversack full of batteries - I was the shit .

Seeing all of the Chinese-made components and the overall poor quality, it seems that you picked up a Chinese knockoff of the original model.

7:43 No I doubt that car would even reach 100 when thrown off a cliff. Perhaps if you melted into a sphere and shot it out of a cannon.

Truer words were never more spoken when he said the ones in the pictures were what you wanted to get for Christmas but this is what you actually got for Christmas

I had two boomboxes when I was a kid. My first one was an Aimor ST-804FS2. It had a single cassette deck, obviously an AM/FM tuner with some other kind of scale but I don't remember what it was, a couple LED meters, a tape counter, and that was about it. My folks got it for me around '83 it '84 for Christmas, and it was huge and heavy. I remember it having very good sound quality and it was fairly loud too. At least that's the 13 or 14 year old me thought anyway, but it did sound reasonably good. The tape control buttons had a goofy design, almost like they were intentionally designed to snap, because that's what happened to two of them after about a year and a ½ or so. The buttons were more or less rockers, and they tapered toward the end as they reached the actual mechanism. When you pushed a button down, it strained the very top where it went into the mechanism, and were unrepairable. So, my Dad, being the problem solver that he was, fashioned an entire set. Out of wood. Two broke buttons meant replacing the rest of them, presumably because he didn't want to have to tear into it again s few months down the line. I don't know what kind of wood, but they were crazy strong, and lasted for the rest of the unit's life. Don't get me wrong, he didn't just carve out a lump of something and jam it into the player and that was that. No, he completely manufactured, finished them so they were all exactly alike and symmetrical, and stained or varnished or shellacked or whatever to complete them. They even looked better than the original set of silver buttons that was common on every piece of equipment at the time. I bought the second one, which was considerably smaller. I bought mainly for dubbing tapes. It was precisely identical to the one in your Dixons advertisement circular at 1:10 in the video. The model on the left page, at the very top. But it wasn't a Saisho, whoever that is. Mine was a Sanyo. Maybe Sanyo contracted out to manufacture some items as a budget or a store brand label, and this was one of them? Actually, I did have a third boombox. It was a Sony, and I would have bought it around '93. It has considerably deeper than a typical boombox, 2× to 2½× as deep, not quite as tall, fairly close in width, had removable speakers, the CD player was at the top, then an analog tuner, and dual cassette decks at the bottom. Even though it was much deeper, I still qualify it as a boombox because it was portable in that not only was it similar in design, but like all boomboxes, it had the option to run on batteries; I don't remember for sure, but for some reason I think it took 6 C-cells, but I could be wrong. Oddly, I don't have any idea what ever be and of any of them. That one you showcased toward the end isn't anything I would have even given a second look. All kinds of unnecessary text all over just screams of being pure garbage. I love that big thing near the top right that yelled out in big red diagonal letters "FM STEREO". Then there was that other one, "Stereo Sound" and finally, "INTERNATIONAL". Gotta love it lol. Two features that were plastered on the front were continuous playback and hi-speed dubbing. What do you want to bet that it did neither, and that if it even had auto stop, you'd be doing good! One thing you did in this video, that somehow I never even thought of doing, was trying to play both decks at the same time! What should happen if you tried that?

In Brazil we call PMPO "Potência máxima para otários": peak power output for suckers.

Continuous play = press play on deck 1 press continuous play then press play on deck 2. When deck 1 auto stops deck 2 starts to play At least that's what mine did in the 1980's

Man that's awesome that you got it brand new out of the box. And for a decent price

seems to be using old sharp wf 939/940 casing with crap electronics inside as there are switches where sticker is and center button was one touch dubbing button that worked. I have original wf 940 and my humble research seems to show most were sold in old eastern block countries and worth good money. Have only heard radio working on mine as tape mechanicals stuck with dried solid grease. restoring now but this video gives me more things to check out

It isnt about watts, its about quality. I measured the input power of my monitor speakers and they draw 24 watts total when the loudness levels begin to hurt. 9 watts at normal production levels. Average customers are mislead into thinking more watts = better sound.

this one its a 100% chinese knockoff, i remember the internals of genuine one totally different from what i saw on this vid (especially the PCB's). genuine one was built on Mitsubishi/Sharp IC's and the power amp was built on two separated IC's instead of one.

Omg at 0.27 I had that red Sharp boom box when I was a kid... Recognised it immediately. Aw memories of recording the top 40 with that...

My "boom box" was a Hitachi Super Woofer purchased circa 1990/91 and I still have it and it still works. Granted it doesn't offer the quality sound of a proper hifi but back then I thought it sounded brilliant!

Original one is NATIONAL 'INTERNATIONAL ' is duplicate

What's wrong with VAZ 2106? This boy can pack a lot of fun.

awesome so glad I I discovered the channel .

Friend of mine had amazing piece of stereo. 3 cassette decks with one detachable as portable walkman, also there was small TV build in