Pro Walkman?
Posted by: Dazlin on 04 September 2001
I lurk quite frequently in the forum and notice that many of you speak of the Pro Walkman with great reverence. At first I thought it may be an "in joke" but am sure this is not the case.
I gave up on the "compact cassette" about the time I upgraded my CD63 to a CD3.5, although I had magnificent service from a Nakamich 480 until then (Broke now), the difference above tapes made them painful to live with and the CD burner has made my Minidisk redundant.
What I would like to know is how does the Sony compare with a good full size deck, and what's the attraction?.... Have I missed something?
I have owned a Pro for about fifteen year now and can honestly that it ranks amongst the best. I also have a Denon DRM-44HX which is, in itself, a good machine but the Walkman with the right cassettes makes this machine seem amateur by comparison. If you're going to buy a machine for musical enjoyment, you won't regret buying this one. The only thing that I have heard that was better was the awesome Dragon.
Regards,
Nigel
But it's not the kind of thing you can just jam in a bag and take with you. I've gone through two in the past year (sob). My old one literally fell to bits and a new one was (wail!) left in the back of a minicab.
Tim J
Some Nakamichi's were (are) better, but most modern decks seem to have gone the same way japanese turtables have, cheap plastic and ****.
Compared to a good full-size deck it has limited bandwidth (rolls off at 15kHz on all tape types) and is noisy.
The upside is it has stunning speed stability, and has a good boogie factor, it just sounds involving. It'll fit into a (big) pocket and overloads gracefully, as does analogue taoe in general, making live recordings easier.
Personally though, I'd buy a minidisc portable these days, it's smaller, lighter and quieter and when run from a good PSU makes excellent recordings.
Andy.
There are plenty of live albums recorded with these things (everyone has their own favourite). I got one in 1987 which I found in a s/h camera shop with a price of £115. I swapped it for a Pentax ME and spent £55 on servicing at Radford's in Bristol.
Questions for other Walkies:
1. It gobbles Duracells like nothing else -- it makes good sense to have a "ghetto blaster" or something to use just for rewinding tapes. What is the best external PSU for a Walkman Pro?
2. I've usually used That's EX90 metal tapes (bought a stack of it years ago) with generally rewarding results. What, in your experience works best?
Best;
Mark
(an imperfect
forum environment is
better than none)
By the way the insides of a pro walkman are a marvel to behold.
It looks absolutely nothing like the normal insides of a hi-tech far eastern product, but the b*****d result of some DIY nightmare.
There's wire links everywhere over the PCB (should have been double sided!) that have to be positioned correctly for best performance. They're all stuck down with sticky tape!!!!
Just goes to show how conventional wisdom CAN be thrown to the wind sometimes.
Andy.
quote:
Originally posted by Andrew B.:
Quote:
They are still selling new ones on Tottenham Court Road, or at least they were a few months ago.Andrew
That is extraordinary! When you think of all the good stuff that gets discontinued every day in order to make room in product ranges for newer, slicker, more LED-ridden garbage, you would have thought that Sony would have discontinued this outdated anachonism years ago. Being available new doesn't, of course mean that it is still a current product, but even so...
What price are they selling at?
quote:
Derren W.:
Still, a Pro Walkman still sounds better than most (all?) MP3 players!
Well, it does has the gross advantage of having much more of the original data to work with...
Paul D:
Many thanks for the SNAPS tip! Oh God, another box...
Best;
Mark
(an imperfect
forum environment is
better than none)
Thanks in anticipation
David