The past

I think the first thing I noticed when I visited my friend Paul’s house, was his Philips D8534 ghetto blaster. It was sitting on in the center of his three-part shelf system, right below the two spotlights, that were hanging from the ceiling, with a speaker placed near the edge of the two outer sections of the shelf system – all black. It was a cool setup, and the Philips D8534 looked so cool.

In the summertime, we sometimes assembled Paul’s Philips D8534 and took it along for a ride, while the Purple Rain album, by Prince, came out the speakers – or any of the Depeche Mode albums, released on cassette tape at that time – for that matter. In retrospect, I am not sure that the musical choice, were the coolest – but at that time we didn’t care.

The Present

A month ago I finally got my own Philips D8534/00. I got it on eBay and found it in Österreich (Austria). It has got some bumps and scratches, but it is hard to see that it is over 25 years old.

Yesterday, I finally washed and cleaned it up, for about three hours. I almost took everything apart, to get inside every nook and cranny. After 25 years or more, it was a bit dirty. There was a good layer of dust inside, especially inside the speakers. Now it is as clean as I can get with conventional cleaning agents.

I’ve also tested it, and everything works fine considering its age. There are still a bit of dust inside the volume slider and the cassette deck lid doesn’t slide as well, as when it was new. In fact, it doesn’t slide at all.

Some repairs

One of the speaker clamps was broken, but were repaired with super glue and now it works fine once again.

Difference

I don’t know if there exists more than one model of the Philips D8534/00. The protection cover in front of the speaker unit, on my model, is made in dark plastic, while I’m almost positive that the same cover on Paul’s ghetto blaster, was made in metal.

from Austria