Hi Dick and Richard (remember the line in "RoboCop"?) --

You can find working boomboxes, not the classic 1970's types (which now have collector value, 
surprisingly), but the later Chinese-special kind with a CD player and radio and maybe a cassette 
player, at ay Salvation Army or Goodwill store. Bring a CD and a cassette (and maybe batteries) to 
make sure it all works before buying. Expect the radio antenna to be bent or broken in half.

If you have a lot of your music on the computer, consider one of the Logitech or Sonos gadgets. Or, 
as Richard says, an iPod dock with an amp and speakers. Many choices there. The Mac Daddy of them 
all is the B&W Zeppelin, and you can get as cheap as near-free when something is on sale at Best Buy 
or Amazon or elsewhere. Some of them also have a video screen.

The only big reason I could see for staying in the boombox world is if you have cassettes and 
regularly listen to them. CD's can be ripped into an iTunes/iPod setup and you'll thank yourself 
because all of a sudden this little thing in your pocket holds your whole music collection and can 
go anywhere with you. If you go for the large-sized iPod Classic, you can fit hundreds of CD's in 
lossless format (no sound degradation). But, if I understand Dick's musical interests correctly, a 
lot of what he likes is 78-era and that material sounds just fine crunched to decent bitrate MP3. 
OTR can be crunched even more and still sound OK.

As far as new-production boomboxes, they were hard to get 5 years ago when I bought a Sony unit for 
a nurse taking care of my mother. The thing actually sounds pretty good and reliably plays CD's 
still. My wife has it in her classroom. At the time I bought that, Sony was the only semi-reputable 
manufacturer selling a decent CD/cassette/radio boombox.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:07 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box


> Hi, Dick,
>
> This has become a bit of a problem, actually. The most common thing now is an iPod dock, but many 
> have 3.5 mm stereo inputs and/or RCA stereo inputs for "aux" inputs. So if you don't dock your 
> iPod to it, you can use a "walkman" CD, Minidisc, or cassette player. Many have radios built-in.
>
> Not as convenient as one-piece. I find lots of CD walkman-type devices at garage sales, but none 
> are as nice as the two I found refurb'd at the Sony Outlet store in Lancaster PA in the 90s--those 
> had SPDIF optical outputs!
>
> Good luck!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> On 2012-01-30 11:46 PM, Dick Spottswood wrote:
>> I'd like to replace an aging bedside boom box with something simple&
>> functional with reasonable sound.  Does anyone have a favorite?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Dick
>>
>
> -- 
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada           (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>