Emerson CTR-965

The Emerson CTR-965 is a 21-inch long, 12 volt boombox from the late 1980's. During those years, square woofers were considered fashionable. But this Emerson actually has conventional round 4" speakers, covered with square pieces of foam. This seems rather silly, but that was the style back then. And it does open up some interesting modification opportunities. You could paint your favorite sports team logo on the foam, or you could remove the foam to reveal the speakers, or you could paint something on the grills.

It's made of thin black plastic and only weighs 11 lbs, so obviously its build quality isn't very good. In cheap boombox tradition, both tape decks are driven by the same motor. Regarding sound quality, it actually sounds fairly good at low volumes, but it can't tolerate much bass before distortion sets in. Which isn't surprising, since the power output is only 2x3W according to the service manual. Your best sound quality will come by using the Line Input. The tape decks should probably be avoided, because the service manual says their frequency response during playback is 125 to 8,000 Hz, which is a very narrow range. The top high-quality boomboxes had tape decks that could play 35 to 16,000 Hz.