Aiwa TPR-968

From the year 1980 comes this Aiwa TPR-968. It looks very classy with brushed metal trim pieces, silver grills, and big VU meters. Surprisingly, it doesn't have very many features. There's no Stereo Wide, no Dolby, no DSL, no music search, and no input level adjusters. But it's still a very good quality boombox with a good weight to it (16.0 lbs). And it sounds very good with its 16cm woofers and 5cm tweeters. Output is 2 x 4.2 watts. The lack of DSL doesn't hurt it. The soft-touch mechanical logic tape deck is very smooth, and it has a very cool air-damped door that uses a small fan mounted on a threaded screw. This is driven by nylon gears which are spun by a string tied to the door. When you open or close the door, the fan spins very fast (probably a few hundred times), which generates resistance. Most other boomboxes use a primitive grease-filled plastic cylinder to provide resistance.

The service manual can be purchased HERE. Be careful when taking this boombox apart. The rear cover has 8 very long screw posts that can easily break if you don't pull the cover off straight.

Different versions:
TPR-968E
TPR-968K
TPR-968H
TPR-968HU
And in Japan, it was called the CS-75X, and it had a few additional features: 5-program music search, L&R manual recording level knobs, and a mic input level knob.