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Yamaha AST-SC10

Audio from the pre-digital age

By Gordon Plant

February 21^st, 2015

button-age audio

I purchased this new in the late 1980’s. Everything else I owned from that era has gone but the Yamaha survived 3 house moves and has outlived countless other pieces of audio equipment.

For the last few years, the Yamaha has been living in Lynne’s painting studio and that’s where it acquired the many paint-marks. The paint trails clearly show which buttons get used most.

Twin-tape decks were a big deal in the pre-digital age: in a world before playlists, it made copying friends mix-tapes easy. Looking at it now, I’m surprised just how many buttons are required for the tape decks alone.

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The Yamaha used ‘ported’ speakers, normal now but something of a novelty when it was first launched. These gave the sound a degree of bass and clarity quite beyond what was expected from portable systems of the era. It still sounds good today.

By modern standards, the Yamaha has an absurd number of buttons. Of the 15 buttons here, only the pair of tuning buttons do anything essential.

One of the reasons this piece of kit has survived so long, is that it was designed to be moved around. Although it doesn’t have batteries and it’s very heavy, it does have a pair of handles built into the frame and it can be easily lugged around. It feels like it could withstand a lot of physical stress without problems. It has a heat-sink along the back edge. I’m not sure if this really does anything but it does make it look like a serious piece of professional equipment.

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With the speakers detached, the military-radio design influence is more clearly visible.

This was my very first CD player. Back in the 80’s, CD were very expensive so for the first few years I mainly listened to tapes. The few CDs I did have sounded fantastic compared to the tapes.

You get what you pay for

This was expensive at the time but was worth every penny. It’s given over 30 years of good sound and good service.

Sadly, the Yamaha is now on it‘s way to recycling centre. Even though it still works and sounds good, it‘s very bulky and most of our audio playback now comes from network devices that take up less space.