Review on 🎧 The Studebaker Portable Retro Home Audio Stereo: a Gold Cassette Player with Built-in Speakers and Aux Input by Chad Judex

The radio looks good. But looks can only go so far. I live in my RV and bought it to fit the setup so I was already expecting not to return it as I am drilling holes in it. My intended applications are as follows (in order of importance): 1. Cassette playback. 2. Listen to the radio. 3. Use the auxiliary input. The first use is ok. It doesn't look like the device will eat up my cassettes any time soon. However, I'm not sure if the ribbon control buttons will hold up. They are not weak but require some pressure to activate. What bothered me the most when playing cassettes was their annoying hiss. At first, the only way I could get rid of the noise was to hold the antenna tight. The?! What is so strange. What is this disorder? I immediately decided that the antenna must be removed before mounting this device. But what about listening to the radio? How would I do it without an antenna? Before I answer this question, let me say that I accidentally discovered that tape hiss disappears when DC is used instead of AC. Then obviously someone mixed up the AC circuit. I don't mind because I'll be using this thing on DC once it's installed. Now to the radio. FM stations are ok. The old-school dial is a classic, but I was quick to miss the digital tuners we see these days. I forgot how hard it is not losing the correct channel no matter how slowly you turn this switch. Well, vintage is vintage. Can't complain too much about that. But AM radio? Forget it. It can't record anything. And if something catches on, then the volume is so low that nothing can be heard even at maximum. So basically I didn't even bother to check anything else. time to ascend. My final setup looks like this: I soldered a constant DC input from my battery to this thing. I soldered a headphone output into this thing (speaker is fine but more MF is needed). I soldered an AM antenna into this thing (I used an external AM antenna from my old SHARP stereo. Now I actually have an AM radio). I also soldered the VHF antenna (I just bought an HD TV antenna for it and it works great although it's clearly not a TV). Overall I think this radio was a great option for my purpose and it's easy enough to open. and solder to the circuit. Whether you want it or not depends on what you need it for. But don't be too strict about it. After all, it's only $30.