Found this relict in an old box recently and thought it worthy of a post.

Back in the pre iPod 80s if you wanted mobile music the Sony Walkman was the answer. But if you wanted to ski where the odd wipeout was routine a plastic cased Walkman would not survive long. So I bought this aluminium clad JVC cassette player instead and as you can see it’s in remarkably good shape after that decade of trips to the alps.

Sound quality at the time was really rather good. It has automatic noise reduction (Dolby) with an output stage that could provide decent volume to pre ear bud headphones. With a 6v supply from 4 AA cells the analogue amplifiers had plenty of headroom to drive even low sensitivity phones. The extra weight was worth it and it could run all morning on a set of rechargeable batteries.

Wow and flutter from the belt drive was reasonably low when put through tight turns and bumps on and off piste. Now the belt has stretched and it needs replacing which is covered in another post. It came with a dark blue protective soft plastic padded case that helped absorb the knocks.