The Connoisseur’s Boombox - FH7 Fully Loaded
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ย. 2023
- A look at the optional extras for the versatile Sony FH-7 Mini HiFi
Music featured in this video...
LPs
Antony Coppens juicerecords-australia.bandca...
Anders Enger Jensen eoxstudios.bandcamp.com/album...
CDs
Candy Apple Blue www.candy-apple-blue.com
Tape
(all from the TH-cam audio library)
Come Vibe With Me - Patrick Patrikos
Assorted Jazz - Tracktribe
A bit of extra info about ribbon cables -
I didn’t include this in the video as it’s irrelevant to almost everyone, but just in case you do go looking for an EBP-78 DC adaptor… it’s worth noting that the ribbon cable connectors on the FH7 Mk3 have plastic cut-outs at the top that accommodate corresponding protrusions present on the FH7 Mk3 sockets. The Mk2 sockets don't have these protrusions. Therefore the Mk3 cable that was included with my DC power adaptor fitted my FH7 Mk2 just fine, but the Mk2 cable would have need trimming with a Dremel to fit the FH7 Mk3 DC power supply’s ribbon cable socket. The pin-outs are the same. You see now why I didn't include this bit...yawn.
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OUTRO MUSIC
Over Time - Vibe Tracks • Over Time - Vibe Track...
OUTRO SOUND EFFECT
ThatSFXGuy - • Six Million Dollar man...
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I miss this kind of styling. Compact, yet still having great presence.
Well Said ! - you just don't get this sort of design ingenuity anymore - and it still sounded great
I thought you were referring to Matt! lol
@@roppa789 compact little man yet a great presence lol
I like it but I'm still a sucker for the 00s era excess with lights and vfd displays.
OK boombox
80s mini hifi was truly the peak aesthetics, not to mention the perfect blend of features and size.
Absolutely. I have the CFS-9900, similar in many ways, portable. Runs on 10x D batteries for 15V. APM square drivers still. Very powerful for a very compact (but very heavy) portable.
80s Hifi in general. It's really expressing its love for technology. A new, digital world has opened up and we want to show it to all of you unapologetically. A huge contrast of todays' design, where it's hiding itself as it it was ashamed of its capabilities. Just like another piece of furniture or room decoration
The peak of aesthetics was the mid to late 70s. Look at gorgeous big components made not of plastic but of polished aluminum, stainless steel, real veneers and glass.
@@socksumi In terms of quality I agree with you but it was a bit boring. In the first part of the 80s designs were more bold, they tried different things, mixing colors... Then it went downhill with the all black stuff. FH7 is partly in metal and speakers are made of wood, hence the 15kgs.
That whole setup looks pretty cool. They really did a lot to make it look cool. Props to the industrial designers behind it.
I've used a lot of CD players since then, but watching this takes me back to when dropping a CD into a player felt so new and high-tech. I felt that in the mid-80s when we got our first CD player, again in the late 80s when I got my first portable CD player, in the mid-90s when I got my first CD-ROM drive, and in the latter 90s when I installed my first CD head unit in my car.
Thank you. I always wanted one of the Sony systems in the mid 80's but just could not afford one. They were indeed leaps and bounds above the competition.
same. I would spend hours looking through those mostly clothing catalogues and work out how much pocket money it would take to own them, heh
I said I wanted a portable radio-cassette for Christmas in 1987 (I was 11), and my dad took me down the local electrical shop to choose one. I went for one that was within my budget of I think £60 (we weren’t well off), but while there I kept playing with a Sony unit which looked like it was from the future, although I knew I couldn’t have it as it was £100 (ie far too expensive). Christmas Day came, and I they’d only got me the Sony one. I felt like the luckiest boy in the world, and I loved that thing to death; it was a Bobby Dazzler. I still have it now, and it still works (although it needs belts); it’s a CFS-W401L. 36 years later and I still usually “just get the Sony one”.
Until you had to replace the surrounds on those speakers.
@@siwynjones that £100 is roughly £300ish today. Quite a sum for a working class family. Your parents must have gone all out for that one! I don't think I ever got a gift that expensive. A grifter bike was probably up there but not sure how much they were. That was my Xmas present aged 10 and was stolen a few short months later. Still feel that one today lol I had that feel for Sony too but that price premium meant I didn't usually end up with that. I had many knock off walkman clones that all died too soon. Also impressed you managed to hang onto that. Selling gifts from a year or two ago was a sort of default state in our house. Only Lego survived the culling! hehe
@@ClayMann Yeah, I know, it really was an exception rather than the rule. My dad used to do a lot of overtime and foreigners, so maybe he had a good run of those. My "Walkmans" were £5 Alba jobs from Argos, my trainers from Woolies, and my coats "off a bloke on the market". Stuff usually had to be handed down to my little brother, but he didn't get that thing as he's never liked music. I had a Grifter for Christmas in 1983, come to think of it; I'm sure they were about £100 too. Maybe they fell off the back of a lorry. 😀
Ah, the great old days of consumer audio -- when systems had real character. I can't believe how little 30 years of tech advance has improved the listening experience. Love the nostalgia vids.
The previous 30 years did see quite a lot of advance (1955-85): Shellac to vinyl, Mono to stereo, valves to transistors, multiple new formats like 8-track, tape and CD. Not to mention a huge change in design from wooden furniture to metal-esque plastic towers.
3:25 That DIGITAL logo was used even on Sony's professional (and seriously expensive) PCM equipment including the studio grade PCM-1630 for use with professional U-matic tapes, and PCM-F1/501/601/701ES series for use with Beta tapes. It also appears on their 8mm PCM equipped video recorders like the EV-S800. I have working samples of all of those.
Bought an FH-55W in 1986. Still have it. Still looks and sounds amazing. Taking it with me. You know, to my grave.
not long now
Mid to late 80's was the golden years of these kinds of systems. I remember going to a electronics fair and drooling over all the cool systems put out by Sony, Mitsubishi, Yamaha, Marantz, and all the others. Even Sharp had some cool systems. That year the next big thing was programmable remote controls. I remember a Mitsubishi system where you disconnected the entire front panel and used that as the remote from your couch. Another thing I saw at that fair was one of the first demonstrations of DAB. We were promised that it would be the standard and in ten years FM radio would be a memory of the past.
There were also a record player that used a laser instead of a regular stylus. The "pickup" was mounted on a tangential arm that was moved using pneumatics. To demonstrate the tracking they played a LP that was fixed to the turntable a few centimeters off center. Seeing the laser slide back and forth while the music played was surreal.
I have a feeling that the big thing in speakers that year was either flat honeycomb "cones" or cones made of birch wood. I can't remember which for sure, but I think it was the flat "cones". Round or rectangular, it seemed every manufacturer was on the train.
I think the portable use case for the FH-7 was more intended towards easily being able to carry your stereo outside to have some entertainment at grill party in the garden etc.
Seems like it would work well for that. As opposed to taking a boombox to a park or basketball court.
My god that thing is beautiful.
Agreed!! ❤
I would add that the rarest feature of this CD player is the white vaculuminescent display... blue, red, and green were common in the 80's but white was really rare cutting edge kit in those days.
Nothing since has come close to how cool and sophisticated that looks. LED, LCD, and even fancy graphical displays just don't compare.
Uh no. VFDs generate their color from phosphors, just like a CRT TV. If you have red, green, and blue phosphors, you literally mix them up and you got yourself a white phosphor.
old sony stuff is just my cup of tea. when i was a kid i had the perception that there was sony, and then everyone else trying to be sony. seeing those vertically flat trinitron picture tubes next to all those round shadow mast sets everyone else had really made their tvs look like the future. they just seemed to be on the bleeding edge of technology and design. they were the apple of the eighties, i'd say.
Aww yes, those were the days... Now i just gaze over to my mobile, startup a app, and choose the bluetooth connection to speakers or earplugs... Ooh how far have we come!
I could not live without a Bluetooth speaker connected to my phone.
This is just further proof that MANY electronics, appliances, and other devices were built leagues better than anything today. And that's why vintage equipment is so very sought after and worth a pretty penny (pence in UK). Good video as always Matt!!! And awesome system!! Sony at its very best.
Hmm... well, it's better made than a lot of the consumer junk, but it was better than contemporary consumer junk, too. This was _high-end_ consumer junk.
A lot of stuff made today is quite high quality. It's just nowhere near as flexible, accessible (from the front panel), or bold. We're in a minimalist era, where high-end means "slab of indeterminate tech." With the exception of batteries or network-connected stuff, I'm sure quite a bit of it would still work in 40 years.
@@nickwallette6201that is what irks me about people that say "they sure don't build them like they used to". Like, they comparing a $1,500 hifi system to the $70 walmart crap "hifi"...
The shots and framing in this video are gorgeous! You really went all-out with the filming, and it turned out great!
Too right. I cannot quite believe that Mr TM appeared even to go to the trouble of seamlessly splicing the video footages as the components were added so that the cassette appeared to be rolling continuously. Take a look at 0:21 and again at 10:29. Hats off...
Love that thing, very formative for me. My aunt had one and an impressive CD collection. I spent many hours making mixtapes on that thing every time we visited. Love the styling, love the era.
Sony in mid '80s to early '90s was really at the peak of innovation and product quality, for consumer electronics!
I'd also argue mid '90s to early '00s was a great stretch for them, considering their trinitrons and handycam lines
Still is
since the mid-1990s, there has been a visible decline in the quality of their audio products.
umm wtf you talking about, they STILL are at their peak NOW smh
@@Toasty_Gaming and from 2000s till TODAY, as in NOW
Wow, hats off for Sony's engineering team! It's amazing they took the effort to apparently use multiple power lines throughout all components, it shows how well thought out this system is!
I wonder how much difference that actually made, though. The indicator LEDs can't be taking more than a couple mA. Not sure if the backlight is LED or fluorescent though. The latter could be substantial.
This is my favorite type of Techmoan video!!!!! Can watch stuff like this for hours!!!
I used to have this (without turntable or cd player). Gifted to me by my parents. My dad bought it in the U.A.E in the mid 80s. It had a pretty good sound. I used to attach a discman via the rca input.
Thanks for the look back in time
My older cousins had this in their bedroom when I was about 8 or wasn't allowed to touch it.
Such a cool piece of tech, seeing it now all put together is kinda nostalgic especially the record player and CD add ons
This is why I appreciate you're channel
ah, the classical cousin move, as if you could break something off by pressing play
Great hifi era, my first cd player was the D5 'portable' with a battery pack the size of a standard cassette recorder, had C cells ! First few in the country.
Well worth watching before sunrise on a Saturday morning. A very stylish system, and very well presented. It's definitely an "absolute unit".
I got myself a cdp-7 a couple years back and when I took it to work everyone loved the look. Just 80s tech at it’s finest.
Peak nostalgia for me. As a teenager I got the FH-5 from (i think) year after the FH-2 and FH-7. The FH-5 is far less clunky when it comes to power supply. It just has a regular AC connector and also a big "drawer" for the batteries. But the FH-5 was the only one possible then to run on batteries. And yes, it was very heavy, but the important bit was of course the coolness about it.
-About the power consumption, lets just say that "range anxiety" is not a modern term in my vocabulary.
For those who doesn´t have a "FH fetish" we have to also mention the FH-10W with stronger amp and double cassette. And last but not least....*drum roll*....The FH15R! The flagship with most power and also equipped with a remote.
What a beautiful bit of 80's kit, love that style. Proper nostalgia! Thanks for sharing. 🙏
I do enjoy watching these boombox/minisystem vids. I've gone through a few, some with better results than others. My most traumatic loss was when i mistakenly left a detachable speaker type system on the roof of the car, to surprisingly see it pass through my rear view mirror on its way to shatter on the pavement. I felt still carry my guilt. My friend laughed, I cried. Genuinely appreciate your good work.
I had a huge bookshelf/boom box like this that sounded absolutely fantastic. A JVC PC-55, I gave it away in 2002 or so, which I regretted almost immediately.
Saturday morning, a cup of coffee and a new Techmoan vid - excellent!
What a great looking mini system, from back when Sony did things properly.
Yeah that’s an awesome system. Back when quality mattered to most manufacturers. Thanks for sharing!
Lovely machine, I love these esthetics
They really do have a timeless appeal--and not just because I'm old and was a kid in the 80s.
I had a Sony system almost just like this, but the planar speakers were 3 way, the tuner was analog, and the lower unit had a battery compartment in back that held 12 D cells. I bought it new in the early 80s, and we used it for many years. Ah, I guess mine was the FH-5
They aren't planar drivers in the APM speakers, two normal tweets, and the bass driver is very similar to a normal speaker except the coil is attached to 4 'pistons' that control the square 'cone'. Really cool tech... When Sony did interesting stuff just form the heck of it.
All these years later and it still looks good! Honestly to me it looks so well built and love all the retro 80's logos.
My first ever system was the top-of-the-range FH-150R with a CDP-7F. This video brings back fond memories. I wish I still had it.
I absolutely love watching your videos
Thanks for making them
Keep up the great work techmoan
If I had the money, one of these mini systems would be my daily driver for a hi-fi.
Wow. As often, watching this Techmoan video got me looking at it on eBay, out of curiosity. The FH-7 was actually available in 3 colors: The black seen here, a silver AND a pretty awesome fire engine red! 😮
Cool! 😎
The CD player has an Index display! Worth its weight in gold for that alone!
Hi Mat , what a great review! Especially as you tracked down and reviewed the optional DC power supply. What a fantastic range of of options the 80s yuppie, i mean audio connoisseur had.
Enjoyed every second of this video!
Thank you SIR!
That's a really neat piece of kit! Never seen it before, and the amount of product lines, models, accesories, iterations.. that Sony made in every range (low-end consumer, medium consumer, high-end consumer, prosumer, professional) still amazes me, just having a catalog of *everything* they ever made would be an absolute treasure.
This is so beautiful to me, and in such good condition!! Thanks for always posting such great stuff.
Great, as always! Thanks for great quality content.
I had a Sony boombox with detachable speakers in the mid 90s, it was brilliant for what it was, loved it, missed it when I let it go.
Yeah, I had one of the ordinary ones when I was a kid in the 80s--just a tape deck and an analog tuner--but it sounded pretty good. The speakers definitely were detachable; I recall the grooves and everything.
These Sony 'FH' series mini hi-fis (and the CFS-9000 boombox) really were the tops in the mid-late 1980s. A perfect blend of style, build quality and sonic performance. The issue was that they were quite expensive at a time when hi-fi was becoming cheaper. They appealed to a certain type of customer who wanted something ultra modern and looked as good as it sounded . . . and was prepared to pay more to get it. As a student I worked in a couple of hi-fi departments ('86 and '87) and although we sold quite a few of these they ended up being discounted because cheaper equivalents were appearing from all the big players. Not as desirable maybe, but price point matters. At least I got my CFS-9000 for a bargain price!
I once had it in the 80s, it would be fantastic to own CD & record player like you have.
❤❤❤❤❤
Amazing mate, such a beautiful machine!! This audiophile is geeking out ❤ thanks for sharing!
What a beautiful piece of technique! And what a change to nowadays with a Smartphone and a decent Bluetooth-speaker that often have surprisingly good sound quality and volume. Thx. for sharing!
What a wonderful episode, thank you!
This is a nice format for a video. I'm really entranced.
That was a really cool addition to your set, glad you were able to get a hold of one!
Thanks for sharing with us.
My parents had a later version of the Sony system from the early 90's; the styling was very similar but the central components were all fixed in one body, and the battery bay was built-in. It too was heavy (even without batteries), but sounded phenomenal!
Wonderful system. I love the way these things were designed.
Love the 80s Sony styling. You’d find me drooling over them in Dixons on a Saturday morning.
I know it's pure nostalgia, but I miss how these things used to look. My dad was in the army and he was stationed in Korea for a year in the late 80s when I was really young and he came back with all this great stereo equipment. He had six disc CD changer with a magazine that had removable plastic trays you put the discs in. I thought it was so cool when I was six years old.
As always it was an amazing vid ❤
You have a lot of nice equipment, thanks for the videos you put out
Mat using a nixie timer is the ultimate flex.
Having watched so much DankPods in my time, hearing Walk Through the Park by TrackTribe elsewhere always makes me trip.
I love these systems for the looks and the quality.
Wow you channel delivers. I remember the excitement back in the day with regard to this type of equipment. The quality and the displays, LEDs etc which are now devoid really on todays technology. I am like like the Mel Smith add talking about a piece of equipment that has knobs on… Great content and expertly delivered as always
that is a gorgeous system and super interesting, thanks for sharing!
Great show as usual thanks Matt
Okay, I rather love this. In particular, I love the actual _functional_ modularity of it all. Even without a DC power supply it was about at that level, but the ability to swap all that in just launched it up and into space.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video, thanks.
Thanks for bringing that to us Matt.
Ugh this is gorgeous. Thanks for sharing!
Sadly, we will never see products like this and of this quality, in the future.
Love the look of this thing and its ability to transform puts it over the top when it comes to cool factor.
That's gorgeous; either on mains, or battery!! 👍
Thanks for that lovely trip down nostalgia lane... 😊
can i just say i love your voice ahaha. i had my year 12 exams this week and after binge watching all your videos instead of studying, my inner monlogue started reading all the questions as if you were in my head. made the exams much more enjoyable.
I had something very similar to this when I was a teenager in the early 90's except it was a Panasonic. I love these videos about old Hi Fi systems and boomboxes. Great content as always.
I found one of these on Freecycle a few years back. Some faults of course but a lovely piece of kit and brought back teenaged memories of gawping in Rumbelows. Now long gone courtesy of divorce. The turntable was a thing of beauty.
Beautiful 80's Sony industrial design as always. Lovely just looking at these things.
Love the professional video style!
Excellent. The DIGITAL wording with the cross hatching is so Hi-Tech. Peak 80s. You have a wonderful collection. 😊
That is one beautiful system.
I love that tube timer you used. Reminds me of the Czechoslovakian era back then.
I use the CD player for this as my primary CD transport, it is amazing, and looks really beautiful as a stand alone device.
I love the "boxy" design with sharp right angles.
Mini systems these days are all over styled and gaudy, like they are trying to prove to you through looks how impressive they are.
This is just functional and well designed. No space wasted on unnecessary curvy colored plastic.
As always, thank you for posting
Sony's batteries from the 80's are crazy. I've a 1980 battery in a camera accessory that I got NOS in 2020 ---- and it still works. They are immortal
The orange radio component's LCD screen backlight and tape direction arrow lights use mini incandescent light bulbs in this model. Since these consume a lot more than LEDs, it makes sense to disable them to prolong the battery life. Also, interesting fact, the CD player's vacuum fluorescent display is actually green but the red filter screen makes it look white.
YOUR CHANNEL IS THE ONLY CHANNEL I HAVE SEEN 100,PERCENT OF !!!
Love the "time capsule" line. Thanks Matt.
Possibly the most Sony thing that has ever been Sony-ed. Wonderful and cool.
Units like that were great for Dorm rooms. Small and at the end of the semester it could fit in the back of your small car.
I had a D5 CD player that I used in my car. I was the only person I knew with a CD player in a car - for a long time. The D5 was good but with the 8 D-cell battery pack was pretty clunky. It also skipped when you hit a bump. I got the D-10 when it first came out - it was marvelous.
as a teen, i had an almost identical sony system that had a double cassette.... it was my main bedroom stereo for many years.
although it did develop a strange balance fault where it would only play one stereo channel. this was fixed with percussive maintenance when i dropped the thing when moving it one day...
I love these 80's mini systems, I have an Aiwa one myself. It hardly gets used but I love the way it looks.
Another fantastic video, Techmoan!
Couldn't quite believe it when you showed the exact-same CD player I found at our local tip a few years age; at 38 years old, it still works beautifully. And I agree: the LEDs are really classy! I had no idea it was designed to fit into the (sort-of) portable range this way.
Damn rare nowadays, it seems. Mine's a keeper, that's for sure.
It’s hard to describe how something like this feels in person. It feels like quality. Like money. Heavy. Not cheap feeling at all.
Sony truly had the best engineering of all of the companies for consumer grade electronics.
Nice to see more of this machine
Thank you for another great video.
Modularity for the win! I like its design. But we all know what is the real deal star of this episode... yes, the Pragotron nixie stopwatch!
Loving the CD player with it’s illuminated ‘Compact Disc Digital Audio’ logo. Very eighties! 💿
Great video so fun to watch.
It looks so good!
Man!!!! such great memories!! I remember my dad bringing home the FH-828 (I had to google the models to find it!) and assebling and playing around with it for days upon days on end and being completely fascinated with it. We purchased the CD player attachment to it and while it didn't go on modularly with the handle I kept it all throughout high school and college as it had a 3.5mm headphone jack and separate volume knob that I attatched my Bose Roommate speakers to. My best friend STILL has the CD Player and I STILL have those Bose speakers.
I'm in love with it 💚
Gorgeous even today