The Magnavox D8443 “Boombox”

Magnavox D8443 full front view

Magnavox D8443 full front view

Back in 1985, during my first full year in the U.S. Army, I walked into a rather modest department store in the great town of Killeen, TX and bought a rather stylish and well featured boombox called the Magnavox D8443. It is interesting to note that as a native Pennsylvanian, I was not aware of the department store chain I went to when shopping for this. The store was called Wal-Mart, and it was not the massive department store chain it is today. It reminded my of my hometown area department store called Hill’s. Either way, I plunked down a lot of money for it, $85 I believe, so I can have a nice sized and versatile boombox radio, which were all the rage in the mid-80’s.

Some of the features which were built into this radio were considered revolutionary for a device in its price range. It had auto-stop reverse and fast forward on the tape player. Most tape players would “auto-stop” when they got to the end of playing a tape, but would simply keep running when they reached the end of the tape if you were fast forwarding or rewinding it to the end.

Magnavox D8443 tuner display
Magnavox D8443 Tuner Display

The Magnavox D8443 not only stopped at the end of play, but also stopped when it was done with a fast forward or rewind. This prevented the tape in the cassette from “stretching” over time.

There also were two shortwave receiver bands along with the standard AM/FM tuner, covering 2.3MHz-7.3MHz and 9.5MHz-21.7MHz. I always enjoyed scanning the shortwave band while growing up. This radio gave me the opportunity to do so without having to buy a secondary radio.

Most radios had audio controls which helped boost the bass and treble sounds and controlled stereo left/right balance. The Magnavox D8443 was no exception. Also included was a stereo control which allowed the operator to go between mono, stereo, and “spacial.” The spacial setting helped to create a surround sound effect, and it worked quite well.

Magnavox D8443 side panel
Magnavox D8443 Side Panel

As far as I recall, very few boomboxes had the ability to record audio. Many were designed to play music, and play it LOUD!!! The Magnavox D8443 not only recorded audio, but it had two built-in microphones to allow it to record in stereo! If the built-in extra-sensitive condenser microphones were not your style, and you wanted to record something more “studio quality”, you could plug in two corded microphones on the side and have better directional control of the recorded audio. To add to the Magnavox D8443’s versatility, you could connect a home stereo sound system to it through the standard line-level stereo AUX input RCA jacks. You could even hook the Magnavox D8443 up to a home stereo system using the built-in AUX output RCA jacks. It could effectively replace a standard tape deck you would normally have connected to a home system. Only this one will allow you to add 8 D-size batteries and take your tunes along with you!

Over the years since 1985, I took this boombox with me to every Army base I was stationed at. It was basically my only source for music on my desk and for those long shifts while manning a two-way radio station. It remained my “go-to” source of music playback for several years after I got out of the Army. In total, the boombox lasted about seven years before things started breaking down on it. Eventually, I simply got rid of it by tossing it in the garbage. It was useless to me now.

Magnavox D8443 tape player
Magnavox D8443 Tape Player

Fast forward about a decade, and the era of nostalgia brought on by the ever growing influence of eBay auctions, I started to get a hankering to own one of these again. I would find them here and there on an auction. It was rare to find one that worked well, or even worked at all. Those that did work well commanded a hefty price, but I was patient. Besides, most of my arbitrary spending money went to other hobbies, like collecting vintage computers and video game systems.

I found out that the Magnavox D8443 boombox developed specific problems over the years. The most common problem was a single gear in the tape drive mechanism literally disintegrating and falling out of its mechanism. Apparently the plastic used in the manufacture of this one gear starts to yellow and become brittle, rendering the tape player useless for playing tapes. The capstans would fail to turn when this gear was missing. Another thing that would happen is the tuning mechanism may bind up, because it’s string driven. The tuning knob would move a taut string which was connected to the frequency indicator and tuning capacitor. In the right conditions the mechanism would bind up due to a problem with the string getting bound up in the pulley system. That was one of the problems that eventually plagued my first Magnavox D8443. I couldn’t figure out how to “restring” it at the time.

Fast forward to 2012. I have spent an occasional amount of time searching for a Magnavox D8443 on eBay since then and finally found one that I considered affordable. Granted, it has the broken tape player gear, BUT, it was in excellent shape and had a reasonable Buy-it-Now price. So… I bought it! The pictures you see in this post are of the actual Magnavox D8443 I received in the mail recently.

I’m glad I did buy it. It’s everything I remember it being and it sounds as good as I remember, too. With today’s advancements in desktop manufacturing techniques, I plan on taking the remnants of the broken gear and either creating a mold to cast a resin copy, or redesigning it for creating a copy in a 3D printer. The gear is about the diameter of a quarter, so it might be a bit difficult to recreate either way.

In the meantime, I’m considering rewiring one of the external inputs and install the guts of a stereo bluetooth receiver and turning it into a portable bluetooth amplifier.

Close-up view of the Magnavox D8443
Close-up view of the Magnavox D8443

29 Comments on “The Magnavox D8443 “Boombox””

  1. I’ve got one of those. Loved it for all of the same reasons. Some minor scratches on the grill in one spot from a topple over while outside catching some rays. And what seems to be some marker on the tuner knob, but no remembering that ever happening. Let me know if you’d care for my portrait I made of it and I’ll email ya. I just can’t bring myself to get rid of it, but like you I’m considering doing something more hi-tech with it. I’ve considered putting my Raspberry Pi in it and making it into the coolest PC you’ve ever seen. Thoughts on that? πŸ™‚
    Bob

  2. There should be plenty of room for a Raspberry PI in the case… or even the tape compartment!

    You can connect the Raspberry PI audio out to the internal amplifier and make it stream Pandora or something.

  3. Jeff,

    My Dad recently found this in our garage after I had asked him if we had any large 80’s style boom boxes. It worked great for about a week when recently, maybe just 2 days ago, the cassette tape would be chewed up into the pinch. After toiling over what could be wrong I have finally figured out it’s exactly the gear problem you’ve spoken about in this article and on your stereo2go forum post.
    Is there anything I can do to get a hold of one of those gears you made cuts of? Also, is it true I can use the RCA output on the side as an aux jack for my iPhone/iPod?

  4. just bought this same one; great shape bought from old couple. I like sansui myself but a quality stereo is timeless and I like the idea for casting a mold and replacing with a 3d printed gear.

  5. I purchased one of these from a good will about a year ago for $5. they obviously didn’t know what they had. the tape deck works great. i put batteries in it and its a portable loud radio. all in all its a great boom box! πŸ™‚

    1. $5 is a STEAL for this model. It’s not the best of its kind in that era, but it can hold its own. It is very versatile due to supporting line level in and out, plus dual microphone stereo recording.

    1. It’s been a very long time since I had instructions for the D8443. I believe that switch has to do with AM radio reception, allowing you to “quick tune” the AM band for hard to receive signals.

  6. If you are a Native Pennsylvanian….and there was a Hills store in your home town…was that Erie??? I worked at a Hills and bought the very same Magnavox Boom Box..as it was the Display Model and reduced to $80!! (in 1985) I was outside on my front porch one night…recording trains going by on the tracks 3 blocks South of me…WITH a factory building across the street…had the headphones on–so I could hear what IT was hearing….could plainly hear the clackety-clack of the train wheels…then found out just HOW sensitive the microphones were…when they picked up a plane flying over!!!

  7. I have one of those. I bought it brand new in the mid 80’s for $65. I just cleaned it up and everything still works. I was going to put up for sale for $15. However, I’m getting a hunch that’s it’s worth more $$. Hell, I just may hang on to it until someone makes me an offer I can’t refuse.

    1. It’s worth quite a bit in full working condition. Congratulations for keeping it in such good shape. Do understand though that one or two gears in there may be on the verge of disintegrating. That was their Achilles heel.

  8. Good read, congratulations. I was wondering why the tape wasn’t working and can hear something rattling around inside.
    I got mine from a lady running a thrift store.
    I asked if she had any electronics, she said no, but there was an old radio I could have. I had no idea what was going to come out of the storeroom. It was this boom box. She said free, but I still gave her $5 for it. Plays well, except for the tape deck. I hate seeing all this lying around, especially when it still mostly works. Especially when the big boxy loud square boom boxes are so cool looking. Have fun with yours.

  9. We found one of these 80s boomboxes at a good will for $5.00 and the radio works as well as the cassette player. Never thought I would bring out my cassettes from storage to play again. Over 30 years these cassettes haven’t been played. I had a small boombox when I was a teen. It brought back memories when I saw this big guy on the shelf.

    1. If it was the Magnavox D8443 that you found for $5.00… GREAT DEAL!!! They’re not the most powerful, but they can hold their own as they represent the average culture of music players during the 80s.

  10. Hello, When I was 13 years young , My parents bought me a Magnavox D8443 Boombox for my birthday at what was the called Murphy’s in Logan Ohio, I named mine BOOMER ,I took it everywhere with me , even to school when it was aloud on field trips, after school work and house chores were done , I would go for walks with My Boombox, crystal clear sound and vibrate the handle as it thumped to the music, I got stopped while walking by a Logan Police Officer who said my music was so loud he could hear it 100 feet away from me , The volume was on 10 and I carried it at waist level, I had it for 25 years , never had an issue with the tape deck but one of the tweeters fizzled out and I replaced both with a couple of computer speakers to even out the sound, I came home from work one day to find it on the floor of the living room in pieces, Our cat we had at the time knocked it off the dresser where it set for many years, I won’t lie , I was upset , I tried to put it back together to no avail, I kept the speakers and put them in another box , fixed the shortwave reciever and scraped the rest , over the years everyday life, it’s hard to tell where the rest of it went, now at 51 , I’m looking to buy another one to show my gkids what we had growing up for enjoyment, Thank You for your post and pics,the nostalgia of remembering our childhood memories is what keeps us young.

    1. Thank you for your story. For the longest time, I thought I was the only one who has ever owned one. After I originally posted this blog entry, other owners came out of the woodwork and I learned it was more popular of an item than I had originally thought.

      Cats knocking over stuff is an issue I had dealt with many times myself. I feel the loss…

  11. I got one for Christmas 1985 and still use it today, 2019! I primarily use it for the radio only but nearly everything works on it. The auto stop I believe does not work due to my teenage attitude and I accidentally broke it. The antenna also broke off but other than that its in great shape. I have it in my bathroom and listen to it everyday while I get ready for work. Its an awesome box and I am impressed that it has never failed in 34 years now!

    1. It’s a great boombox. Not designed for “booming” as much as it was to carry on the classic big portable stereo sound that was so popular in the 80s, and still hold its own with the others.

      As for the autostop feature, there are a number of parts that work together to make autostop function. It is possible to either break or misalign those parts when mashing the cassette player buttons and cause autostop to fail, yet still allow the tape to work. In another one of my articles on this site, I link to a video I made for disassembling the tape mechanism to fix a certain gear. That gear isn’t related to the autostop feature, however, a lot of the autostop components need to be removed to get to the gear. It could be used as a guide to check and/or repair the autostop feature in the systems that are broken in that sense. But if you don’t actually need autostop. It’s probably best to leave it be for now.

      http://www.vintagevolts.com/repairing-the-magnavox-d8443-boombox/

  12. Bought mine around 1984-1986 a few yrs. later the cassette plastic window wouldn’t open or close properly. With some oil added it ended up working. Then the cassette wouldn’t play so I used a cassette cleaner and it played for a while, yrs. later after no use it decided to work again. It’s in perfect condition now and works great except when you turn the tuner dial it sounds scratchy. This is because the dust in the tuner amplifies to the speaker (learned that in Lincoln Tech in Allentown, PA, taking the electronics servicing course). All you need to do is shoot some tuner cleaner in there. But I’ll most likely try that 1st before I open it up. Still sounds great!!!

Leave a Reply