Hi. This is the most iconic Boom Box of the 1980s and I've done a tear down video of this I'll link it in if you haven't seen it. It's really interesting and this is a Boom Box from 2023 that costs $33 and we're going to tear it down. Don't blame me, you voted for it.

So what do you get with this? Bobby Desler You get a cassette deck you get AM FM and shortwave radio. you get extra base because it's a boom box. it's going to be thumping. You get a carry handle believe it or not, you actually get USB and SD card interface runs from four diesel batteries, It's got a microphone recording capability, a headphone jack, and Bobs your uncle 33 Yankee bucks.

Oh, did I mention the wood grain finish? But yeah, you're not going to get much stre cred wandering down the street with one of these bad boys. You're better off with an oscilloscope. trust me. Wander the streets like a boss.

And did I mention it's got retro Bluetooth as well? So of course for 33 Yankee bucks, 49 Australian dollars. We do not expect much from this thing, but anyway, it's going to be interesting to have a look what's inside this thing. Here's the Box we've got: Bluetooth USB SD MMC card, AMF I'm sure wave I'm surprised and cassette recorder I Don't know why they bother with the record functionality, but anyway a Bluetooth interface so that might be handy as a Bluetooth speaker. A whoin 1.5 watts output for moderate volume.

So much for the Boom in Boom box I Don't think we're going to get much boom boom even though we've got extra pace for the sticker afficionados. Oh look at that. it's like a bought one. And look at this.

It's got soft eject mechanism. Oh oh look, it's got wanky gold trim and what the hell is scale here? I mean seriously like as if you didn't know it's a scale and on the front here they've got a microphone I don't know why you'd bother and we got the extra base wanky sticker here. And what the 3 and 1/2 in uh looks like doesn't look like a very deep throw cone on this thing and what looks like a like a two-way Tweeter system. but I'm pretty sure it's not I think it's going to be a full range? Uh, jobby and then as I said yeah, we've got the soft opening mechanism but there's nothing fancy in that.

um and AM FM I Was surprised by the shortwave I don't know. like I don't know why they bothered these days. It's got Apss. does that have a music search system? We'll try it out.

So anyway, it's available in any color you like. as long as it's black I guess um and which? sorry totally Goofs up my uh camera exposure uh 3 and a half mil headphone jack here. There's no external line in uh function at all and the brand is uh, Enko. but I'm sure it goes under a million different brands.

The local coal Supermarket uh here. they actually currently selling it for $69 Australian dollar and it's under some other Uh brand. I'll put it up, but door comes out of the one Factory in China so uh, 220 240 volt AC input So it's not a universal input so it looks like it's only for uh, like you know specific. Market they might uh, retransform a TA it for different markets but Dc6 volts, 4 d size batteries.

It's a wireless boom box speaker or ghetto blaster if you will leave it in the comments. Will you ghetto Blaster or will you boom Box in the 80s here in Australia and they were generally called ghetto blasters but I suspect you're not going to be do doing much blasting in the ghetto with this thing. and QC pass sticker of course. abs Absolute finest quality here.

and actually what's what's over there? There's your switch for your 110 to 220. They didn't bother with rubber feet cuz that costs extra of course. But I'm actually uh, rather surprised at the uh I'm not going to say it's quality, but like for 33 bucks, eh, it's fine. But the best part about this undoubtedly is the wood grain finish.

Look at this straight out of the 1970s. They didn't even bother. This is not 1980s U this is 1970s stuff but these feel like I like The Rocker switches here. we' got tape uh MP3 and uh, radio.

It looks like there is no onoff switch, just like regular boom boxes from the 80s as you've seen uh in the uh tear down I've done before but these are a bit spongy but you know what do you expect so if you leave it on tape, it should be off. We can actually measure the consumption of that and if you press, uh, play that would actually uh, switch on the power cuz there's no power switch on this. but yeah USB Interface Memory stick there's a lead here and um, just there's no LCD at all. so you don't know like what track you're playing or whatever.

you just go next and that's it. and for you. Graphic Equalizer efficient AOS sorry you've only got your treble base and your volume. uh, these feel like actual pots.

um I Don't think they're digital encoder, but we'll uh, find out. Then of course we have our telescopic Rod antenna there. so I like I'm actually surprised this thing's actually it's like for the price, it doesn't look and feel too bad at all. actually.

I mean I'm not going to be overly harsh on this thing. for the price bracket, we're just curious to see what's inside and doesn't sound any good. but you know what we say here on the EV blog. Don't turn it on, Take it apart and you can see the overexposure on the camera there.

It's all black, right? so it's going to be interesting to see how they've got this Pric down because it really is quite remarkable that you can sell this in a M major department store here in Australia for 49 Aussie bucks or 33. So taking out five, no six screws here and well, there you go. We do have a Transformer We've got the tape mechanism that apparently a lot of people left it in the comments on Twitter that there's only one Chinese maker of tape mechanisms these days and well, that's it. Um, very quite 1980s pointto Point wiring for a bit of stuff here.

that's interesting. so it looks like we have three main boards is probably it. We've got our SD card uh board over here which is basically just going to that's just going to be completely standlone, probably just getting audio directly. uh, out of that.

but I do kind of get sort of, you know, 80s boom box vibes from the discreet uh wiring. And there's our antenna Rod There's a bit of hotnot action going on there and a bit of hot hotnot uh string. And they've even gone to the effort to like tape over some wires here. So that's all right.

And there's our uh Main's Transformer down there. Where's the switch? Yeah They haven't done that. They haven't implemented that. so the sticker is correct.

It is uh, wired for 240 volt only, but when they designed the Plastics on it, they were obviously thinking that uh no, yeah, we'll make it multi voltage but in the end they went yeah, no, we'll save a couple of cents. Um, and we'll just work in a different transformer for the different markets there and it's all hot. Not here. Um, what's going on here and is that a micro switch? So when you plug in the mains connector cuz this is not Mains here this is your Main's um output here which goes straight into your Transformer Yeah, check it out.

There's a switch down in there that pushes down so when you plug in. uh, the figure8 mains Flex there it disconnects the battery nice and the speaker down in here. as I said, that's not exactly a deep throw woofer there. So yeah, but it is 4 Ohms eight marked 8 watts.

Yeah, it's got an 8 wat speaker so even though they got Plus on the box 1.5 Watts I guess uh, there's probably not going to be much of a power amp on your board over here I suspect, but the the speakers are overrated. I'm actually surprised. but yeah, no surprised for finding that there is no Tweeter in there. Of course that just that thing on the front is uh, fake and which was actually common in the 1980s.

you'd have fake uh tweeters. they'd even put a little piso diag fragm in there cuz they didn't cost anything and they just wouldn't hook it up. But I did not expect a dualway speaker system or ported enclosures or anything like that. But so two full range uh speakers I assume is it is it actually stereo or is it is it mono? wouldn't surprise me.

Yeah, I'm right. Look, this red wire here goes across here and over to the other speaker over here. Sorry, you can't see it. Well, the speakers are actually in series.

so you've got one big 8 ohm speaker. This sucker ain't stereo. it's mono. But I know it's 33 bucks and you can see that over here.

They just sold it on the back and there's only one speaker terminal there. So there you go. and that's the headphone output. uh, socket there.

so they just switch it uh, directly. You even switch it through to your headphones, the same amplifier for the headphones and for the speakers on this thing. Oh, it's not going to sound great. and a big difference from the 1980s is you don't get any M resistors.

you know? I'm a M fan boy I like my Ms got some yeah, a bunch of surface mount uh, what's that chippy down there? I can have a look that would be the tuner would it? Yes it would because I can see the rod antenna down in there and the fine wires coming up and they're solded under there. So that's got to be one of these all-in-one jobbies. And yeah, that's a BK 1198 uh, 3 in1 Amfm shortwave receiver chip in there And it's just mounted on the bottom. and is this going to be a single sided? PCB Like, where's the, where's the rest of it? Where's Wally I'm actually reasonably impressed Somebody Went to the effort to Loctite these screws down to the PCB and they've done it over on this one as well.

They've even put some like tape here just to Cable manage. Uh, the wires and stuff. So believe it or not, they do actually care about the Assembly of this thing. Sure, it's built down little price, but hey, I'm I'm actually not complaining and check it out.

Here's the wire going over to the tape. Head over there. Um, and that's all she wrote. Where's the It's supposed to have a microphone, doesn't it? Where's the arrays head? It's all in one is it? So there's our single-sided audio board.

Um, it's just got the buttons. so yeah, they're obviously shaving sents off here. so these are all going to be single-sided and that's for our audio uh controls there. So uh, that's like there's no active stuff on there.

there's a few passives and I got those knobs off the top and check it out. They have like a bit of paper stuffed in there to make them fit cuz they're a little bit how you're doing so. yeah, okay, whatever worked. So there's our tone board single sided uh as you'll note and they got 300 cave pots on there which has an in ground and an out.

It's a little bit how you're doing, just no Active network there, but what do you want? It's mono anyway and I honestly don't know why they bothered with the microphone there like nobody cares like and does it record to the tape or does it record to the SD card cuz I'm not sure if there's a way to actually switch between that, but anyway, you can get a for your speaker of Fici andad you can get a full Glory shot of that. There you go. Um yeah, it's not going to win any prizes and they G to the effort to actually hot snot that in as well. not just to hold it in with those brackets.

so they they really care about this thing. like not rattle into pieces and yep, I absolutely call that I'm singles sided. Yeah, there's no extra circuitry there for the tape. there's no active circuitry there at all what's going on and there's a switch that actually hooks up to the tape deck which um like switches that on or whatever.

but like we've got some. We got some caps over here and here's your rocker switch interface I Rather like that they've gone to a bit of effort and the um and the tuning dial here. look at this rather than your tra traditional cord. This is great.

They've got this which translates into a pot that that pot there down on the board and then they've got another Cog up here which then that goes up to a the a ratchet like Cog along there like that. Oh now I've goofed it I got to get the position right and then that's what moves the uh. the dial on the front. Isn't that something? Hands up.

Leave it in the comments if you ever saw that in like a 1980s boom box can't say I have. and there's our single chip. uh Power Amplifier in uh quote marks um and that must be handling. um also the input from the tape deck.

so they must just be like switching that straight from the head with a little bit of filtering and bias and whatnot. Um, straight through to the amplifier chip. So that's how they've got their price down in this like all single cider boards and they've saved every scent they can on semiconductors. Uh, of course.

like you know active stuff or your passives are dirt sheep and you know the rest of the money just goes into the Plastics and the the tape mechanism and and the Mechanicals uh of that and whatnot. But um, yeah, it's actually slightly better than I expected. maybe apart from the like I Didn't expect stereo, but you know it would have been nice. Aha I Just noticed two transistors here q1 and Q2 There There you go.

So yeah, it does have a little bit of maybe some discreet transist amplification, but that's all she wrote on the tape mechanism. And of course it's only got uh, the the one signal for the head. So obviously it's a mono head. uh like unbelievable.

And given that there's no additional um active uh Drive output there to uh, do the erase head for this thing. So it has recording capability so you got to have an erase head on there. Um, it's probably doing that with a permanent magnet. We have to have a closer look at the front of the tape.

There you go. Got the tape mechanism out and this is apparently a Tanish TS 21 mechanism. and yeah, apparently they don't make it anymore. so there's like like Chinese clone makers of it.

but it's all based on that and it dates back uh to the80s. It's got Hs1 there, whatever that means for those playing along at home and our tape head here so you can see there that is mono. otherwise you'd have like a split top and bottom there. but nope, it's just the one unfortunately.

And yep there is your aray head so that that will flip up like that when you press record on this thing and that is a that's just a permanent magnet so it's not actually uh driven so that's pretty how you doing. that's like the cheapest uh Bare Bones minimum that you can do eh but you know that's what you expect for the price, it's the drive motor there for those playing long time. it's getting a bit ugly now. there's just wires flapping around in the breeze here, going everywhere and I don't want to have to desolder everything.

but there's the there's the back side of it little contact switch down there there and that's the motor. drive. There you go. So yeah, that's going over to your motor over here and through that little micro open air micro switch there.

But it is what it is. and this apparently is the tape mechanism used in practically if you buy any modern machine that doesn't matter what type it is. um, it'll have one of these tannish Tn21 or Andor clone um units. So yeah, apparently they're not that great.

but yeah, you know at least they play I Guess Well let's see what this bad boy sounds like, shall we? So as I suspected tape. but if we switch that over to MP3 Yep, the lead comes blueto mode Bluetooth mode. It speaks to me mode what accent is that? Well, it works. none of that fine tuning rubbish.

There you go. It does actually work triple base, but I know what you're all thinking Dave can it play Smash Hits 887 Well, there only one way to find out. Uh yeah, it's got to go up. so count wo tell you that sounds pretty awful.

Well I'm rewinding. It doesn't seem to stop at a song, so I don't know what that it doesn't have a music search thing. Yeah, kly man. not sure if you can hear that, but the lowlevel hiss on this thing is just awful.

No mean it works. Compare it stereo there. Go MP3 I'm from the USB stick I'm given that the best chance possible barely more than a year before. mic out now sh from the and I got my shoe phone and it says connected and here we go.

The big ones with a massive speaker, the big 7600 and the reason this is Iconic is because this is the one that joh. So yeah, the Bluetooth mode works on it and it sounds like it's it's passable for speech. it's not as good as anything else I've got. Yeah, I just don't get the market for this thing at all.

If you want something with a any sort of decent tape deck, just go and buy a secondhand unit from the 80s, the '90s even into the Uh. 2000s and it's going to support Chrome metal, uh tapes. It's going to be full stereo. It's going to have proper preamps and amplifiers and maybe even line out and everything.

And if you want to, uh, do Bluetooth um here then well, there's much better capable Bluetooth uh units. and once again, it's mono and it just it sounds like garbage in the amplifier. They're Penny pinched on absolutely everything. But as I said, I'm amazed at what you get for the price.

I'm amazed that they can build this for the price. but I just don't understand the market for it Really? No is Jack of all trades masters of none Anyway, if you like that video, please give it a big thumbs up. and as always discuss down below catch you next time.