Sony Walkman MZ-R410 Personal MiniDisc Player

"I love technology" as Adamski once said, and no trip down techno memory lane is complete without some old skool tunes on some old skool recording equipment. A cheap minidisc recorder which allows you to dump old vinyl or cassettes onto portable media with minimal fuss, similar to a cassette, but lot more durable and accessible! Sony, of course know what they are doing and even without an optical lead, a normal phono input is superb for recording. You can set the volume too when recording old live concert tapes etc, then edit the tracks and unwanted stuff out of the recording! This is what PC's proclaim to do but with too much messing around! Minidisc was ahead of it's time. Enjoy the alternate future of music, imagine life without PC's and enjoy your music again!

Hook up, Load in, turn on.
Phenominal Bass boost
Logical edit tools
Easy to use. not techie
No fiddly remote to mess up
Got what it needs
Forgot what it dont.

This is a great music minidisc player and its a Sony! I decided to buy it because Ive always wanted one but never bought new as I thought they were too expensive at the time. I was attracted to this item as it stated it was in good condition like new and had its original box.

It was mint! Im very happy with it, for £20 winning bid what would that buy you? A couple of rounds on drinks down the local or barely 4 gallons of petrol!

The only downside is it did not come with a rechargeable battery or protective case...But thats no drama!

Other than that Great value!

I have owned one of these Walkmans for around 5 years now. It has proved to be be surprisingly robust, and the sound quality is excellent. There appears to be very few controls on the front panel, but there is a comprehensive range of functions which are menu operated. There is still a steady stream of these appearing on eBay secondhand, presumably from members who have moved on to iPods etc. You should be able to get a good example for under £20 - the hedphones if supplied can be discarded and replaced with some Sony MDR-E818s for around £7.

USEFUL FEATURES
Will record from an analogue source, or from the digital output on a CD player using the fibre optic cable supplied
Automatic or manual record level
80, 160 or 320 minutes playing time from one Minidisc (SP, LP2, LP4)
Tone controls with bass and treble boost and cut with 2 user pre-sets
Many hours of use from a single AA battery

PROS
Will record directly from vinyl
Easy to split an album into tracks
Excellent sound quality
Tone controls can be used on the move to get the best sound quality in different locations
Good battery life
Robust, no vulnerable hard disk
Self-contained - does not rely on a computer for recording

CONS
Need to keep a collection of Minidiscs
Distorted crosstalk between channels in LP4 (320 min) mode

I've bought some MZ-R410s and Minidiscs off eBay as spares for when they become obsolete, as I still feel they have some advantages over MP3 players. I normally use the LP2 (160 min) mode as this gives the best balance between sound quality and playing time, and usually fits 3 or 4 typical albums to a disc.