Sony D-7. This was the model of my very first Discman, bought new in 1985. That particular one is long gone, but when I started getting back into this hobby a couple years ago I rwas keen to get another. Unfortunately most of the offerings on eBay were either prohibitively expensive or looked like they were ridden hard and…well, you know the rest of the phrase. This one came up about a month ago and the seller indicated it had “new batteries in the battery case.” (The D-7 doesn’t have “batteries” in the traditional sense. Think of its battery pack like what you’d see inside a laptop these days.) Even if the BP-200 pack was shot, the rest of it was in such great condition I figured I’d take a chance and would send it off to Kaosun like I did with my D-15 some time ago if it actually needed the mods. I put down the maximum bid I was willing to part with, and waited for the auction to run its course. Imagine my surprise when I won the auction for far less than my maximum!
It arrived yesterday. It really is in pristine condition. Everything works, and while I haven’t run the battery down to see how long it lasts yet*, it does work off the battery pack just fine. It’s not a Kaosun repair; there’s no charging LED on the battery case, but it seems to be just as good.
Yeah, like all pre-GForce players of the era, you just have to breathe on it and it will skip, but that goes with the territory. The fact that it sounds amazing more than makes up for it, and it can drive my Sennheisers louder than what I can tolerate—something that can’t be said for the examples of the later Sony players with the digital amplifiers I have. The mechanism is much quieter than either my D-10 or D-15, two other players of the same era—which is kind of surprising.
So yeah, I’m squealing like a schoolgirl meeting the Beatles in 1964 at the moment…
*EDIT: It lasts long enough to get through 4 CDs before needing to be plugged in to recharge.
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