Mid '70s party in a box

Okay so picture the scene it's 1976 you're sitting  around the house you're a little bit bored you   don't know what to do with yourself and then all  of a sudden in comes uncle Mat and he brings this   thing and he says don't worry everyone I brought a  party in a box and of course the big question now   is what exactly has he brought on the side of  the box is the word Sopic inside the box we've   got these individually numbered brightly coloured  plastic discs they look a little bit like drinks   coasters and in this section of the case I’ve got  an index which details what is contained on each   of these disks now for anyone that doesn't read  Japanese or hasn't already figured out the purpose   of this I’ll tell you this is a portable karaoke  system yeah don't all switch off at once if you   want to hang around I'll show you exactly how  this works so of course the first job is to look   for a song to sing along to we've got a hundred  tracks on here there's 50 discs with a track on   either side and if we look through the titles I  can see there at 127 we've got the Green Green   Grass of Home so we'll pick that one out so I'll  just get disc 127 and along the top of each of the   discs is the title and it's not that one of course  obviously there we go that's the Green Green Grass   of Home of course this is all down to my amazing  Japanese abilities I can read this and nothing   at all to do with Google Translate so that's the  song that we want to sing so put that to one side   so of course now we need the lyrics and  those are contained in these booklets   that are neatly stored in the bottom here these  are identical to one another as far as the   information on the inside goes so you can see  there we've got the lyrics for each of these songs   and since we picked out this one let's have a look  what it is D23 so we just need to find 23 in here   and there we go those are the lyrics to the song   now these booklets are the ones that you'd hand  around at a party there's the main booklet back   here which has got the same information in it  but just on larger sheets and they're contained   in plastic so this is the one that you'd  pass around perhaps use more often than not   now I mentioned that this was D23 and the D  signifies that this comes from set D there are   multiple sets but this set was particularly well  presented very clean with all the documentation   included a really nice little box as well and  this part here that's supposed to fold around   like that so you can just have the index on  the top and if we just turn it to one side   it says Cap Record D so of course these things are  known as Cap Records for rather obvious reasons   and it's played back with one of these now I'll  get it out of the box in a second I just want   to mention along the bottom here though it says  Japan Metals and Chemicals Co. Limited or JMC.   Now that doesn't sound like the kind of company  that would bring out a karaoke device and in   fact JMC is still around nowadays and don't  really seem to have any foot in the electronics   business at all so let's just get it out of  the box here we've got a nice carrying case and   a microphone little earphone an ac adapter  instruction booklet and a nice little orange   piece for the end of that microphone there as  well okay so we'll get the disc player out of   its carrying case and this might ring a bell if  you've been following this channel for a while   that might look familiar we've got a speaker  on the top an on off switch volume control   and if we just open this section up this is  the battery compartment because you can also   run this thing on four AA’s as well as that AC  adapter and the records go on the bottom here   so this is the cap that comes with it that  protects it but if we just to get one of these   other cap records like this one here it just  goes on there like that and the device is played   in this position now inside the bottom here this  section revolves that is the stylus and as it   revolves it moves in towards the centre of the  disc now I mentioned that this thing might look   familiar so this is called the Sopic and  previously on this channel I have featured   the Panapic now at the time we looked at this  we couldn't really figure out why it was called   Panapic it makes more sense there because  it comes from national of course Matsushita   national Panasonic so if we can imagine the Pana  bit being for Panasonic and the Pic bit well   that's coming from here so this was  Panasonic's version of the Sopic   and this was a licensed product so  the Sopic was the original that came   out in the mid 70s this was the late 70s and I  don't know if you remember how this one worked   it used books like this now this is also a karaoke  device so inside here each song has a nice picture   to accompany it but also we've got the lyrics  and we've got the disc for the device to play   so you sing along with the music which is  played back via this this just gets placed on   top of the disc on the page and you plug your  microphone into here and you can sing along it's often quite tricky trying to find the history  of a product that was made just for the Japanese   domestic market and it doesn't help in this  case that Sopic is also the Selangor Oil Palm   Industries Corporation, a Croatian ex-footballer,  a liquid detergent and a village in Serbia.   Fortunately the Karaoke Industry of Japan's  website does have a page dedicated to the history   of karaoke. Now incidentally there are two  separate Japanese chaps that are generally   credited with inventing the karaoke machine  independently from one another around about 1969   they both used devices that played eight-track  tapes and neither of these people patented their   ideas and years later in the 1980s some chap in  the Philippines managed to get that karaoke patent   which then earns them a fortune each year  but one of those original Japanese blokes   this is the one who actually sold the first  machines over there at the beginning of the 1970s   he mentioned he didn't consider himself to be  an inventor so he didn't patent anything because   he'd actually just stuck together  a few things that already existed a   car stereo a coin box and an amplifier  now one other interesting thing mentioned   in this article is that the idea came  to him after recording a backing tape   for an event that he couldn't attend and he put  this together for the president of a steel company   now maybe that is the start of that connection  between the Japanese metals and chemicals company   and karaoke anyway back to the chart and I've  copied across the first section of it thrown   in the translator and this shows that the very  first commercial karaoke machines went on sale   in 1971. the first one being the handmade eight  juke and I’ve highlighted that at the top left   in orange now the Sopic cap record system is shown  here as being introduced in 1975. so this really   is quite early it's just four years after those  first hand hand-built machines from what I read   in japan karaoke only really started to blow up  around 1976 so the Sopic system really was there   right near the beginning and riding that first  wave of popularity I’ve put some batteries in it   fortunately it is working but there is a bit of a  problem with it at the moment it sounds like this yeah the audio keeps cutting out because  there's some oxidisation on this volume   pot so I need to be able to get to the back  of that so I can spray some contact cleaner   on it now fortunately along the base here there  are four screws so it just looks a matter of   taking those out and then removing the inside okay  well that came out easily in fact the speaker came   out a bit easier than it should have done because  this is supposed to be stuck to the top but the   adhesive that goes around there has just come  loose so I'll stick it back in when I put it   back inside the case but the volume I need to  get to is there I'll still need to unscrew that   to get to the other side of it to spray the  contacts but the construction of this thing   is uh really quite impressive I mean look how  much metal is in here this is a a well-made   piece of equipment but let's just get that volume  pot out first and then we can have a look at it and there we go now I'll spray that  with some contact cleaner in a second   there's still some wires going up into the  top here those just lead off to this power   LED so we'll leave those in position  right so I've got my contact cleaner   and all I need to do is just spray a bit in  here well quite a bit liberally really I've   got some stuff down here to catch any  over spill it'll evaporate as well so   there's no danger of this damaging anything it's  just a matter of working this volume pot up and   down making sure that the contacts are clean  I think that should do it let's let's find out   well as far as fixes go you don't get  much simpler than that just a bit of   contact cleaner sprayed on there we've got no  crackles at all now one thing I've noticed here   as usual the motor has a date on it it's the  27th of December and then 70 and the last   digit is a very oblique angle but I can make it  out as a six so December 1976. now whilst I've   got this open it's a good opportunity to be  able to see how it all operates on the inside   however if I was to play this disc you can't  see through that so you wouldn't be able to   see what the stylus is doing fortunately it did  come with this clear disc which enables you to   have a look through the bottom as well but just  to show that the disc isn't the thing that's   revolving it's actually the mechanism I'm going to  put a sticker on here because it does have a bit   of an optical illusion effect it looks like you've  got a revolving disc so if we put a line on there   you'll be able to see that that's not moving and  we'll just pop this on here and face it towards   the camera so I think you can make that out there  that's my line of tape now this sticker here   that is actually on the mechanism on the inside  so you can see how it all moves in a second so   we'll press play this is a demonstration of  various percussion sound effects not the most   interesting disc but at least you can see  how the mechanism works a little bit better this is the motor here there's the drive shaft  it's going on to this rubber wheel here well   it's plastic wheel with a rubber ring around  the outside there's another smaller ring on   the bottom and that's coming into contact with  this large wheel here and then that goes through   into the bottom and that spins around the whole  stylus mechanism but as you can see it really is   very well put together I mean this is a a quality  piece of equipment I'm just peeling a bit of this   double-sided tape off because I intend to replace  this before I stick it back inside the case right so we've got the playback working fine on  this now but the next question is how do you use   it as a karaoke machine because if you look at  the inputs on the side here we've got a power   in and an earphone out no mic in and there's  no other socket on it anywhere and the answer   to that is no doubt this that was also in the  box this is an FM microphone if we look at the   wire that's on here you can see that's an antenna  it's not designed to be plugged into anything   and if we look at the options available on  here well we've got off position there and then   mic there and FM mic here and then  auxiliary there so it does multiple things   now if you were to just turn it into the mic mode  there's a socket on the bottom here so you will   be able to wire it into something else via that  but not this device because it doesn't have the   appropriate input so this is no doubt supposed  to be used with the FM mic mode by the way the   auxiliary at the bottom there that also  lets you plug something into here to then   be transmitted out via this out over FM and  then you could pick it up on a normal radio in   fact this is a quality piece of kit here because  if you look at the bottom it's made by Marantz   although it is especially for the Sopic device  now here we've got the frequency adjustment   this is to adjust the FM output so 76 up to  megahertz and I've got no idea whether this   thing is on when I turn it into the FM mic  mode because there's no LED anywhere on it   and also if I try and talk over it or make any  noise it's just not coming through to here at all   so I'm going to have to test this with something  else fortunately I've got a couple of Japanese   radios in the house so I'll be able to find  something that will pick up the frequency this   is transmitting on if it is transmitting and then  if we know this is working then we can perhaps   retune it to communicate with this thing oh by the  way I have swapped the batteries out in this in   the bottom here it just takes one AA there so iIm  hoping it's working let's get a radio out and find   out and if this is working it should be relatively  easy to find out what frequency is transmitting on   because we won't hear this annoying hiss  it should just come through as silence ah I think we might have hit it but oh no  is that it 77.9 no close 78 let's try that   hello check check check yeah I think we think  we're through there now let's turn this up   okay mic check one two what is this yeah it's  working fine so I've been reading through my   instructions for the Sopic S100 and it turns  out this thing doesn't have an FM receiver   in it at all no the mic is designed just to  tune into your radio and this is designed to   have its audio either output through the built-in  speaker or via that earphone socket and there was   one of those little earphones included inside  the box so of course you could mix those two   things together externally you could send your  audio out from this into something like this   with an auxiliary input and then you could plug  your microphone into the mic socket on the front   here and I can mix them together like that but  yeah it wasn't as sophisticated as I thought   however this is the S-100 that's the first  one the S-200 did have a mic input on it and   it just so happens that the Panapic from National  was based on the S-200 and therefore as well as   the audio out we've got a mic in on here so we can  actually plug a mic into this one and use this as   an all-in-one karaoke device so I think we should  switch over to this and I want to just play you a   few samples from these discs just to give you an  idea as to the quality of the background-music I don't know if you recognised any  songs that were being played there I   certainly didn't and in fact when I looked  through these to try and find which songs   I did recognise I played through them all and  there's only a few that have tunes that I know   and that's not surprising of course these are  songs that were popular in japan and they go back   some of them to the 1950s all the way through up  to the 70s and as someone who wasn't brought up in   Japan with the history there these are unfamiliar  to me there are a couple that I do know now   there's My Way which is infamous for people being  shot when they're singing and I have previously   sung that one well ‘sung’ in one of these other  karaoke demonstrations and we mentioned the Green   Green Grass of Home now that one I managed  to find it by looking at the name of the   writer of the song but it actually has it wrong on  here it says Cuzly Putman but I put that in and it   corrected it to Curly Putman and that brought me  through to the song of course the titles of these   aren't always a direct translation as well there's  a couple of others I managed to find in a similar   way because if you look through the book here  you can find the names of the people who wrote   the song and if those are in English there's a  good chance that that will be something that I'm   slightly familiar with the truth is there are only  a couple in here and there's one if we get this   one here which I'm unfamiliar with if I can get  it out but it's more famous in France there's a   song called Champs-Élysées now the Champs-Élysées  was a hit this wasn't this is called Waterloo Road   but because of the names of the people that wrote  it on here that's how I managed to identify that   so I think we'll have a go with Waterloo Road okay  in true 1976 style I've got the lyrics here on my   phone now just one thing I wanted to mention  before I start off I'm sure some people might   think that perhaps if I put this in the auxiliary  mode I'll be able to feed the audio in from the   disk and then also transmit it out over to a radio  while speaking into the microphone No it doesn't   work that way just auxiliary only or mic only but  you can't mix the two things together so what I'm   doing here I've just plugged the mic into the back  of this one so we're not using the FM side of it   at all just using it as a normal mic and my voice  will be coming out through this speaker here along   with the music one thing to say about this though  I realised that you know nowadays you get those   karaoke devices with a little ball that would  follow along or the text would highlight the bit   that you're supposed to sing if you're unfamiliar  with the song it's a little bit tricky to know   the speed that you should be going at but this one  I've listened to it a couple of times and I think   I've got a bit of a gist for it now so let's give  it a go and I should mention this song has a whole   kind of chirpy chappy cockney music-hall type vibe  to it or at least it did on the versions that I've   listened to so I'll try my best to emulate that  but I'm not great with accents Walking down the   street today I saw a girl across the way I asked  her where she's going she said come with me and then we stopped and chatted  as we passed the time away I think that's enough of that there's just one  last job to do before I go we might as well create   the thumbnail for this video so we need to take  this out of the scene because it doesn't belong   with this set and we might as well pop the disc  back inside the box keep it all neat and tidy   bring in the original Sopic  S100 and the lyrics book as well   and there you have it that is your mid-1970s  karaoke party in a box I hope you've enjoyed   having a look at this here today but that's it  for the moment as always thanks for watching

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 278,431

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, Sopic, Cap Record, records, S100, Karaoke, history, vintage, retro tech, mini record, Panapic, 1970s, Japan, entertainment, music, player, S200, repair, demo, test, singing, s-100

Id: nJq30FR2GN8

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021