WALK
THIS
WAY
The Sony Walkman is back. Here's why it never went away.
Playback to the Future
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“You shouldn’t have killed my mom and squished my Walkman!” Star Lord screams after his cassette player is destroyed in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. His Sony Walkman was a denim blue and silver model, the TPS-L2, many of which are now selling briskly on eBay.
The portable personal cassette player was a revolutionary idea that was born less of necessity than of convenience. In the late ‘70s, Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka, vexed by constantly lugging his bulky TC-D5 cassette recorder around on business trips, asked his engineers to make a smaller device that offered playback only, in full stereo. “Technologically, it wasn’t this amazing invention,” says Edd Thomas an antique electronics expert who runs the site Historic Tech. “All the parts were basically there. Sony just had to piece them together.” But the device turned out to be far more than the sum of its parts. “For a lot of people, it was their first personalized, 24/7 soundtrack.” That intimate listening experience forged a path directly to the iPhone.
StarLord’s Walkman now sells on eBay for around $375, a price that reflects both the series' popularity and the collectibility of the earliest model. But other editions, like the DD-9 (often considered the best sounding Walkman ever made) can go for thousands. “You’ve got a forty year thing that happens with collectibles,” Thomas says of the Walkman’s recent resale resurgence. “Like any kind of collectible scene it peters out a little, but the best pieces will maintain momentum.”
Analog Strikes Back
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The analog vs. digital debate has raged in dive bars and record stores for decades, in response to the broad adoption of the MP3. Analog audio (i.e., cassettes and records) is a more loyal reproduction of the original recorded sound wave, whereas digital audio (i.e., CDs, MP3s) can’t produce a loyal replication of the original recording. Critics bemoan it as clean, but sterile. But analog recordings can (and often do) have physical imperfections that can make the music pop or crack as it plays. “But that’s part of the fun of it,” says Thomas.
Hence the return to the record, and not long after, the cassette player.
“Not everybody wants to walk around with a record player in their hand,” Thomas says. And that’s why the Walkman is still around. A portable homage to the analog movement, it plays music in all its imperfect glory and is small enough to fit in your pocket—or clip to your belt buckle, if you’re really radical. “It’s a kind of countercultural,” he says of Walkman collecting. “They aren’t being purchased to sit on the Tube every day going to work. It’s more just to geek out about.”
“Digital music is like chocolate. You keep eating it and eating it and then one day you go—I’m sick of this chocolate. Analog music is like organic food.”
TPS-L2
The original Walkman, which cost $200 (or 33,000 yen) when it was released.
WM-W800
WM-B52
WM-DD30
WM-51
WM-EX808HG
WM-3000
WM-DC6
WM-F107
- This small rubber wheel pushes the tape’s film along. The rubber often wears out on these, and they can be hard to find.
Pinch Roller
- The drive belts help turn the wheels that rotate the cassette’s film. These can lose elasticity or rot.
Belts
“You shouldn’t have killed my mom and squished my Walkman!”
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As collectibles go, Walkmans are a relatively low-stakes game: “They’re not rare,” Thomas says. “Sony produced half a million of these things, and a lot of people kept them.” The stakes are higher, however, for models that elude collectors, like the 10th anniversary sterling silver-plated Tiffany edition of the WM-701. There were purportedly only 2000 Tiffany Walkmans released. Earlier this year one sold for $12,500.
Not So Risky Business
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Walkman Models by Highest Average eBay Price
Sterling silver Walkmans aside, most models are fairly easy and cheap to fetch. You could pick one up at your local yard sale or thrift shop, and even if it’s broken, it won’t cost much to fix it.
“The parts are available,” Thomas promises, “It’s not costing you a fortune.” Tapeheads will buy replacement parts in bulk or 3D print the more obscure pieces. Others will bring broken devices to audio repair specialists, which is a considerably more pricey solution. A broken Walkman DC-6 Professional (selling, on average, for $340 on eBay) will cost around $250 to service at repair shops like Analogique Services Labs in New York City.“If you do have to give it to a specialist, you’ll spend more money on their time than the parts,” Thomas says.
1979
1985
The only model to have two tape decks, one for playback and one for recording.
1988
It didn’t float like the first Walkman Sports, but this model was water resistant and had a built-in solar-powered alarm clock.
1989
The first device to have a Direct Drive transmission, or gears which turned the tape instead of belts.
1987
Featured permanently attached headphones that could wind up into the device.
1993
A rare model featuring an all-chrome body.
1990
Also known as "My First Sony," this was designed to be child-safe with smooth edges, volume limit, and a battery cover that couldn’t come off.
1984
The Walkman Professional, widely considered one of the highest quality models ever made.
“Sony Walkman,
as a brand,
as an idea, will carry on.”
1987
This solar-powered model needed a lot of power to run the cassette player, so the solar panel covered more than a half of the back side of the device.
- Edd Thomas
View the Most Commonly Sold Walkmans
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Most Commonly Sold Walkman Models on eBay
View the Highest Priced Walkmans
The type of cassette can make a real difference as far as playback, hence a spike in the secondhand blank tape market, “They don’t make the chromium dioxide ones nowadays, so you can find a single tape that will sell for over $100.”
*Based on data collected from August 31, 2017 to August 29, 2018
Source: Terapeak
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- Ernesto, Analogique Services Labs
Words by Alyssa mercante
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