Sony Walkman WM-FX101

The Sony Walkman WM-FX101 was released by Sony in 1994. I think it is the most mass-produced Sony Walkman, but without detailed production numbers I cannot support this claim. It is simple and inexpensive, it has no autoreverse, no tone controls, no Dolby Noise Reduction. Basically, the only extra feature is the radio tuner.

I bought it in the 1990s. At that time I already started switching to CDs, listening to them on a computer at work. Portable CD players just started to appear and were very expensive. I needed a cheap cassette player to listen to playlists I recorded off CDs.

This simple Walkman served the purpose. In terms of playback quality, its frequency response is very respectable even for a component deck — 40 Hz to 15 kHz — and tape speed and pitch stability is good enough for most popular music, less than 0,2% WRMS.

The construction is all plastic: not only the outer body is plastic, but the mechanism as well. Plastic gears are mounted directly onto the circuit board to simplify the design.

Earlier models of this generation, like the WM-FX19 shown above, had the gears lubricated, but several years into production Sony switched to a more slippery material to avoid lubrication. So, these Walkmans are often noisy.

The old-school radio with manual tuning has its benefits. Newer walkmans with digital tuners, with built-in clock and alarm need constant power. If you forget to replace the batteries, you need to re-set the clock and re-program station presets. This walkman has no such issue, and back in the 1990s I used to listen to just one station anyway.

It is powered either by two AA batteries, or through a 3-Volt jack from an AC adaptor. The latter seems to be an afterthought, as the Walkman cannot be stood up on its side while connected to the DC adaptor.

The sister models of this walkman add Mega Bass, two-way tone controls (FX103) and a Dolby Decoder (FX105), but they are less common.

The FX101 was freshened up in 1997, renamed into FX141 and was produced until at least 1999. Millions of these walkmans were made, they are abundant in thrift stores and on eBay.

They are cheap, plastic, often noisy, but fairly decent, if all you need is just a basic transport for tapes that don’t use Dolby.

Have fun playing tapes!