Being Generation X, I’ve owned music and video on a lot of media formats, and owned a lot of playback equipment. Sometimes I think of writing a post about my opinions on various media formats (spoiler: I loathe vinyl records and always have), but today I’m talking about the first Sony Walkman I ever owned.
I had to spend a while looking at images of various Walkman models – there were a lot of them! – to figure out which one I owned. Actually I owned multiple through the 80s and 90s, but the first one was the one I loved, a red WM-30. It’s actually redder than I remembered, I recall it being mostly silver with red trim. But it was almost 40 years ago, as the WM-30 came out in 1985. I imagine it was a Christmas or birthday gift, so I would have one it during junior and maybe senior years of high school.
The remarkable thing about it, to me as a high school student in the early-to-mid 1980s, was how small it was. I remember once comparing it to an audiocassette case, and as best I could tell it was exactly the same size, not counting the protrusions of the buttons. The electronics were mostly in a half-inch-thin strip at the top of the case (i.e., the side the door to insert the cassette opened from), including where you inserted the battery. The case itself expanded about half an inch downwards to accommodate the cassette, which was a pretty cool design. It sounds a bit janky, but I don’t recall ever having a problem with the door opening unintentionally and the cassette flying out. It seemed like an engineering marvel at the time, and in hindsight, for its time, it still seems like it today.
It could play audiocassettes, of course, and also FM radio. (I don’t remember about AM.) I think it was my first player with headphones that weren’t over- or on-ear, but they weren’t quite in-ear as we think about it today. But maybe close enough. Of course I hadn’t owned a player before this one, so I had no standard to measure it against.
Here’s a video showing it in action, including several of the characteristics I describe.
It felt very futuristic at the time, and I brought it to school most days so my friends and I could share listening to tapes.
This little recollection has a sad end, though: One day I left it in my bag in a locker during gym class, and someone came in and broke into all the lockers and stole my beloved Walkman. Never to be seen (by me) again.
I bought a new Walkman pretty quickly, but it was a bulkier model, over twice as thick as the WM-30, and also simple black. I think it had padded on-ear headphones, and the pads were kind of fragile. I think I owned it into college, and then replaced it at some point – maybe with other brands – and later moving on to a Discman (what a disappointment those were), and then, of course, iPods and iPhones as MP3 replaced physical music media.
But I’m still kinda sad about losing that Walkman.
(This post was inspired by this episode of the podcast The Memory Palace.)
My first Walkman was a later model than that, still in the “almost as small as a cassette case” category. I probably got it in 1988 or so.
The thing I remember most about it was that it was the first music playing experience I had with real stereo separation. There was a headphone jack on my parents’ stereo, but nobody ever used it. And me and my friends mostly listened to music in the car, or on a stereo system with speakers close together on a shelf.
Popping in a cassette, and having panning and other stereo effects be so noticeable, was remarkable.
My super-deluxe Walkman in 88 or 89 was one of the most SF-for-its-time devices I’ve ever owned, equaled only by a Mac SE. Cassette-sized, with auto-reverse, recording with Dolby B and C playback NR, bias control for the common tape chemistries, built in “stereo” microphones on one corner, an internal speaker for use instead of headphones… alas plastics that were not entirely up to a drop from my waist to asphalt. My previous simple, humble, large, heavy Panasonic Walkman….still works after 40 years.