Aiwa CS-880

The CS880 was the top of the line boombox from Aiwa back in 1981. It's certainly one of the heavier boomboxes, weighing 19.3 lbs (8.8 kg). That's without batteries. Its dimensions are 59x33x16 cm. It has a nice digital tuner with station presets, and a VERY smooth and stable tape deck with a Wow & Flutter rating of only 0.038%, which compares favorably with home hifi decks. Its frequency response is very good for a boombox (35 to 16,000 Hz when using Metal tape). The amplifier section consists of two Panasonic AN7146 chips. Output power, using the conservative FTC standard, is 2x7 watts minimum. But its "maximum" output is supposedly 2x14 watts.

The front is dominated by a blue face surrounding 5 speakers (two 14cm woofers, two 5cm tweeters, and a 17cm passive radiator). The back of this boombox has no vents at all, so the bass stays inside to work the passive radiator. The woofers have big magnets and soft foam surrounds, enabling them to really move and produce enough bass to make the passive radiator vibrate very noticeably. There is also a "DSL" button (Dynamic Super Loudness), which boosts the bass even further.

Its sound quality is very good. Most collectors say it's one of the best sounding boomboxes from its time period, and I mostly agree, but I sold mine because I didn't like the way I had to constantly adjust it to prevent "buzzing" noises from the passive radiator. Most passive radiators have a spider structure behind the disk to dampen its motion. But this one doesn't. It's simply a disk suspended by a foam surround. So its vibrations are somewhat undisciplined. Mine produced "farting" or "buzzing" noises with certain types of music (especially R&B), despite the fact that my foam surround was in perfect shape. I found myself constantly lowering the bass or turning off DSL with some songs, only to raise them up again with other songs. I think if Aiwa had used dual surrounds (front and back), or rubber instead of foam, they could have stabilized it better.

The instruction manual can be purchased HERE. The CS-880 shown below has a black colored tuner dial. This is true for most, but not all, CS-880's. The Japanese domestic version, (Aiwa CS-J88), has a white dial.