A monstrously large, and monstrously heavy, boombox from 1981-83, the Sharp VZ-2000 is a piece of retro-tech that I may have accidentally, well, not broken lockdown rules to acquire, but bent them until they squealed like a Reddit user actually required to get a job.
The Sharp VZ-2000 is big. Really, really, big. No, bigger than that. It's BIG. It's 74 centimetres wide, 19 centimetres deep, and 46cm tall. It also weighs 17 kilograms without batteries, of which it takes 10 D cells (which makes it about 20 Rampant Rabbits powerful). But those numbers don't really do it justice. It's almost cartoonishly large. It's the sort of thing that you might expect a cartoon character to pull out of hammerspace when faced with kids on a bus with music tumbling from their tinny phone speakers, before saying "bitch please," and sticking on some nice hardcore punk or NWOBHM and cranking up the volume. And it sounds as loud as it looks. Put it like this. I had mine professionally overhauled shortly after getting it, and the day afterwards even with the volume at 40 percent I was getting the neighbours moaning about noise. But it's not a harsh, blaring loudness, but a big, room-filling loudness. It sounds... full. I don't know how many watts it has, or how accurate the cited wattage is (the catalogue refers to 32W of "music power" and we all know that PMPO is bollox), but it's pretty potent. And you can hear every detail. The quiet bits sound quiet and the loud bits sound REALLY LOUD.
Part of the reason for its size and weight is because it contains a full sized, twelve inch record turntable. No, really. The middle of the box is a vertical linear-tracking turntable which can play both sides of a record. This needs some explanation. Now, you're probably familiar with how an ordinary turntable works. You have a horizontal platter that rotates around a spindle on which the record is impaled and a stylus on a floating tonearm is applied to it, tracking the grooves and by causing movement in an induction coil converting the physical groove into an analog audio signal. Well, this isn't like that. It is, in fact, more akin to the mechanism of a CD player. The record is placed into a well and, as the turntable door closes, is clamped between a rotating centre hub on one side and a freely moveable spring-loaded gripper on the other side. Then a stylus dangling from a belt-driven rail is moved into contact with it as it rotates, and the groove thus converted via the same induction coil into an analog audio signal. However, because the record is accessible from both sides in this way, there are two styli, one on each side, and thus the machine can automatically sense when one side is over and automatically move the other stylus into position. This means that the machine can be set to play either side, one side than the other, or even both sides continuously until you stop it. But that's not all. It even can auto-detect whether it's an LP or 45 by use of a switch and a set of optos within the well though this can be overriden manually if you have one of those 7" 33rpm records or 12" 45rpm records. The auto-detect sometimes gets a bit funny if you have clear or translucent vinyls, which it can think are just 7 inches and play them too fast and start halfway up a side.
"Oh, but the magic of vinyl is that you have to position the stylus on the groove juuuust so!" I hear the hipsters cry. Whatever.
Then of course, like any good Brixton Briefcase, it has a tape deck. Only the one, which is at an angle on the top of the machine. It's a pretty good one though. Granted, it's no Revox or Nakamichi Dragon but it's good enough. Dolby B noise reduction, and ability to record from any source with manual level controls to ferric, chrome, or metal tape with a manual tape type select. Wow and flutter is reported at 0.065%, which isn't top tier but is low enough that you won't notice it even if you tried. I've recorded some tapes on it (usually mixes of heavy metal songs that I like) of all three types and they sound pretty good. Well, I think so anyway.
So why do I like this thing? It's too heavy and bulky to be truly portable. Putting it up on one shoulder is a painful experience with its sheer mass digging into your clavicle. If you want to walk down the street to a hardcore beat with your JVC vibrating the concrete, better get a JVC like the song says because this thing is just too cumbersome to do that for long periods. You can lug it around by the handle (which is made of metal and on a slider rather than a hinge so it doesn't break off) but you may want to practice building up your grip first. You also cannot use the record deck while it's in motion because there is a switch on one of the feet which must be pushed in for the stylus to engage. This is so if it gets jolted it won't skip across the grooves and scratch your records or damage your cartridge. But no, the reason I like it is because it's space efficient. If kept plugged in to the wall you can have a record player, a tape recorder, and via the aux input a CD walkman or a phone or MP3 player for your digital music collection, all in one place, and all in one third the footprint of a full stacker system. Granted it isn't going to sound quite as good as a full on stacker, but if you're space limited like me in my flat, it's worth having. There are even thanks to enthusiasts bluetooth mods that you can plug into the aux input and tapping the power supply so you can use it also as a bluetooth speaker. It's also, in my view, a strike against current year with its disposable everything that a machine from 40 years ago is still in good nick in current year. I mean, be serious. How many appliances other than very expensive ones from current year will still be in proper working order in 2060, really?
I paid £150.00 for mine and about the same to have it overhauled in January 2021. I did think about opening it and rebelting it myself but the service manual made my head spin with the procedure for popping it open and I didn't trust my cack handed self not to break something. You can get one on greedbay around now for £500 or so I believe, though since Techmoan covered it in late 2022 I fear it's gone up in value rather. I'm not selling mine. I like it too much.
(IRON NODER 2023 #7)