Crappy at first but when tweaked sound rocks!
Written: Jan 04 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good sound, stylish and durable.
Cons: Included earphones are lousy. Has balance and head alignment problem when first bought.
The Bottom Line: Go for it if you don't want fancy stuff and are willing to give it lots of 'TLC'
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| nicholaschin's Full Review: Panasonic RQ-CR15V Personal Cassette Player |
It all started when I went to the store to get a walkman. I had no previous buying experience so I just got what looked good. At the store, there were a lot of walkmans, walkmen or whatever. I first tried the Sony ones on display because I thought they were supposed to be really good but when I tried them the sound was wobbly and distorted. I don't really know why but maybe it was because the display models were old and well used. I then tried the Panasonic RQCR15V walkman and found the sound quality to be quite good. In fact it was the best sound of them all. This was with sony earphones I had bought a few months earlier.
I had a hard decision on which to get but the sound quality on this stood out. I then looked at the features, this had auto reverse, digital FM/AM tuning, a battery tester and a digital display among others so I decided to get it! later when I got home, I listened to some of my tapes. At first all was fine but after a week, I noticed something funny! Why was most of the sound coming from the left earphone? I tried a few tests and concluded that it wasn't my earphones or my hearing but it was the walkman! This puzzled me greatly so i tried a few tests. I later found out that there were two screws next to the reading head which controlled the alignment. I tweaked it for about 2 hours and found most of the balance problem was gone and the sound went from to bassy to nice and crisp. There was however still another problem! side A was still leaning a little to the right. Unfortunately it can't be fixed and I'm still plagued with that problem. I've also noticed that the included earphones are lousy and makes the walkman sound bad. I recommend that proper earphones are used to get good sound.
After fixing that problem, I decided to look closely at the walkman. There are 4 buttons on the top for stop, FF, FRW, play and a switch which changes the play direction. I will explain later on. The buttons are 'finger powered' not the ones where you press a button and the mechanism kicks in. Yes!! your finger actually pushes the head and mechanism into place. Pushing FF and FRW snaps the mechanism back into idle position and starts doing the desired action. On the front of the walkman there are six buttons. On the row on the left from top to bottom: 1.AM/FM 2.Hold 3.Battery Check.
On the other side: 1.Preset 2 and 3: tuning ,-. Pressing and holding the hold button down locks the front panel so your radio station wont change if you accidentally press the tuning buttons but doesn't lock the top four buttons. The battery check lights up the 3 leds on the front. Full would be all 3 lights at full brightness and empty will be the one on the left rather dim but not all the way out. The presets work by pressing the button and then holding down a number button until there is a beep. To recall a preset station, the preset button is pressed followed by the number. There is also the battery door on the front. It is opened by pushing up the door from the bottom and flipping it over. The battery area holds 2 AA batteries.
On the left side, there is the XBS switch, the volume potentiometer, the metal or normal tape switch and the headphone jack. The XBS switch turns on/off the XBS system which amplifies the low frequency sounds which has the effect of adding bass. XBS stands for Xtra Bass System (One of those days i turned the walkman upside down and saw the XBS sign printed on the front and said to my self, "HEY!! Why is the word 'SEX' written on my walkman!"). The potentiometer works like your regular POT or to the normal person: variable resistor or volume control knob. Below that is the metal/normal tape selector. There is really no big difference on which tape used or setting of the selector that the normal person would notice but there is a difference to those "must have perfect sound people". Under that, you have the normal 3.5mm earphone/headphone jack. I'm sure you will figure out what it does eventually...
On the back and right side of the walkman there are no buttons, knobs, switches or any other stuff. Yep, absolutely nothing. On the back you have your flip back tape door. The tape is slid into the inside if the door and the door is flipped back to insert the tape.
When the play button is pushed the reading head inside gets pushed into the tape and the other spinny things (don't remember the names)clip on to the tape (like your everyday tape player) to regulate the speed. The odd thing about this walkman is that the reading head isn't a 2 way head but a 1 way head on a height controlled platform. I guess this was done to reduce production costs. This has problems like balance problems because the height control isn't very precise. The switch on the top of the walkman controls the height of the head. The direction of the tape is reversed and the height is changed to play the other side of the tape.
Another thing I have found out is that the motor isn't as strong as I would like it. It plays all normal tapes you get from a music store with songs on them fine because those tapes are usually about 1 hour long or less but if you use a recordable tape which is 90 minutes long or longer, the motor doesn't seem to have enough torque to pull the tape along and you get all kinds of wobbly, slow and low pitch sounds from the tape moving too slow.
The battery life lasts for about 20 hours on alkaline batteries for tape and 30 for radio. For Ni-Mh 1400's they last for about 26 hrs tape and 35 hrs radio. On any rechargeable batteries, the batt. meter doesn't fully light up. The 3rd bar is always half dim and after a while you get only 1 bar left. This doesn't mean its flat because it will last for quite a long while more in that state before going flat. Its a bit misleading and hard to tell if the batteries are almost flat or not.
For the AM/FM presets, after programming they will stick until the battery goes flat then gets erased! That’s very annoying because I have set then many times just to have them erased by flat batteries! A tip to avoid that is when the digital display gives the E. sign wait for the chemicals in the batteries to mix around a little giving that last bit of power after recovering from the drain from usage. When this happens, the E. sign will go away and you can change batteries without memory getting erased. Took me 2 years to figure that out. When changing the batteries there is only 10 seconds before the internal backup power runs out. This works assuming the batteries just ran(almost) flat and you can change them quickly in 10 sec.
On the part about looks, it's quite stylish in silvery silver or silvery blue. Uhmmmm.... metallic silver or metallic blue (comes in 2 colors). If you are a person like me going round the world with walkman in pocket, rubbing round suitcases, other people, contact with sweaty hands, dirt, dust, heat, cold, friends and many more, the paint will rub off in about 2 years unless you get a protective case (which by the way I have never seen before). The paint mainly wears off around the buttons on the top and the play direction switch. Either than that most other areas are almost new. So far, only the paint has worn out but the mechanical parts seem to be fine with regular use and knocking about.
Overall, I would recommend it to people on a budget who want fairly good sound and don’t mind spending some time tweaking the head alignment. Very good and sturdy walkman, resistant to the elements not to mention shock. I've wet it a bit a few times but i just dried it with a hair drier and its just as good as new. With some form of manual balance control sound rivals high-ish end walkmen/walkmans.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
nicholaschin
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Member: Nicholas Chin
Location: Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Hi! I'm 14 and I like electronics, music and games.
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