I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s and I remember the boomboxes of the time.
I think we look back at the equipment of the period with rose tinted specs.
Generally they gave tinny sound and except for the most expensive had poor recording ability.
You had to spend a lot of money to buy something decent then – way more than the £389 that WeAreRewind are asking for, when adjusted for inflation.
Also no new equipment is able to license the Dolby noise reduction these days and personally I am not keen on the sound compression that Dolby gives.
There are plenty of new old stock TDK or Maxell type 2 cassettes on eBay that give very low background hiss without Dolby for anyone looking at making recordings or the new RTM type 1 cassettes are also very good in this boombox.
I ordered 2 Curtis Boomboxes a week a part and both were delivered quickly.
The first one – an early serial number had a couple of issues – which I shall talk about below. The second unit I received worked perfectly.
The Curtis boombox is a premium product and it shows it.
The sound quality, the design and functionality are all excellent.
The tape mechanism is currently the best quality available for a new unit and works well.
It is a nice touch that both the playback/recorded head azimuth and the motor speed are easily adjustable.
The recording ability is very very good for a portable – similar quality to say the early non Dolby Technics cassette decks of the mid/late 70s. You can adjust the recording level which is excellent.
The recordings that I made, sounded very good on my ONKYO INTEGRA cassette deck and to be honest I was very surprised. As I have some late 80s premium decks, I probably won’t be using the Curtis Boombox to record much, but you could and I think you would be very happy with it.
The first unit I received had an issue with the Bluetooth and a lazy/sticking VU meter.
Once my phone (or my HD digital music player) was connected to Bluetooth there was a lot of loud artefacts and pip pip pip data sounds that were played through the speakers with the music. The issue was not subtle and made Bluetooth unusable in this unit.
The biggest problem I have – is that I emailed the support email address 11 days ago, providing a video of the issue – with at least 4/5 working days during this holiday period and I haven’t even had an acknowledgement email from them. Also there is the suggestion on their website that if I return the unit to them this is at my cost! Which I understand if I change my mind - but not if I am sent a faulty unit.
Which in my case from Valencia would be in the region of 60euros.
If you are ordering from outside the EU, you might want to find out, how you get the unit back to the company in Paris, if the unit you receive has an issue - now or later on.
WeAreRewind may be a small company, compared to JBL, but for 449euros I expected a premium product, which has back up if there is a problem – so actually answering support emails would give confidence. Also I see that someone else’s review mentions a similar problem, where WeAreRewind admit there was an issue with early units – after I made these purchases. So they realise there is an issue with some early units, but still ship them anyway!!!!
I have fixed the unit myself – I had to take it apart and place RF blocking fabric between the system board and the speaker amplifying board – which has cured the issue. I am an electronics engineer – but I should not need to do this. I can live with the sticking VU meter.
Regardless, I think that the Curtis Boombox is an amazing bit of kit. There have been no decent boomboxes released on the market for almost 30 years and actually the second Curtis I received is superb. Great sound, good quality recordings and excellent playback,
