Are all new personal stereos doomed?

I was hoping to have better news - but nope, it is what it is. I have to call it - the likelihood of ever seeing a good new cassette ’Walkman’ ever again is so close to zero…I’ll just say it’s zero. I have to thank YoungSung Jeon (our man in Korea) for going to all the trouble of making a two hour round trip to pick this up from a store and then sending it on to me. While I had hoped that this would have shown that it’s still possible for a company to make a reasonable quality cassette “walkman’ type device in 2021 - it demonstrated the opposite. However this result does have a value of its own. Rather than fruitlessly buying each new device that comes out only to get the same results - we can see that the problem lies with the mechanisms that remain available. Since it seems extremely unlikely that anyone is going to start making a new high quality personal stereo cassette transport ever again - we can now draw a line under this period of history. Finding a newly manufactured high quality cassette ’Walkman’ has now become as impossible as finding a newly manufactured high quality Edison Cylinder player. Things move on. These devices have passed into history. As a result you now either choose to buy an old one with the understanding that you deal with whatever issues come from making that decision - or you just don’t get one. 00:00 Old man 01:54 What’s in the box 03:49 Buttons 05:14 First impressions 07:10 Quirks 08:14 Bluetooth 08:53 Audio Tests 11:19 You can’t polish a … 15:52 Wow & Flutter & more Wow 16:41 How to spot & avoid these 19:52 The truth hurts 20:49 Patreon Credits CORRECTION: The test audio track used was misnamed - the correct track details are English Country Garden by Aaron Kenny --------------- SUBSCRIBE ------------------ ------------- Merchandise ----------------- ------------- SUPPORT --------------- This channel can be supported through Patreon *******Patrons usually have early access to videos******* ---------- Outro Music ----------- Over Time - Vibe Tracks ------ Outro Sound Effect ------ ThatSFXGuy - ------ AFFILIATED LINKS/ADVERTISING NOTICE ------- All links are Affiliated where possible. When you click on links to various merchants posted here and make a purchase, this can result in me earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network & Amazon. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to AMAZON Sites (including, but not limited to Amazon US/UK/DE/ES/FR/NL/IT/CAN) Regularly asked question Q) Why are there comments from days ago when this video has just gone live today? A) Patrons usually have early access to videos. I’ll show the first version of a video on Patreon and often the feedback I get results in a video going through further revisions to improve it. e.g. Fix audio issues, clarify points, add extra footage or cut extraneous things out. The video that goes live on youtube is the final version.