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If you think Apple have been clever in the way
they’ve developed and marketed their products, they are mere amateurs compared
with what Sony got up to in their heyday, from the early seventies until the
late nineties. Like Apple today, Sony’s creativity wasn’t just confined to
their products; they also had some really memorable advertising campaigns. Take
the one (see below), with the somewhat wordy strapline: ‘It’s a good thing
people don’t buy cars the way they buy Hi-Fi’. Not especially catchy, but
combined with that wacky image it definitely made you look. However, like
so many ads – more so these days -- it takes a while to work out what product
is actually being peddled. If you look closer at the smaller photo, in amongst
the hi-fi components, you might just spot a Sony ST-80F AM/FM tuner, just like the
one featured here.
It’s a shame it is so hard to see in the ad. It
was one of the Sony’s most elegant products; it still looks as fresh as a daisy
and is arguably as eye-catching as the weird car. The advert must have worked, though. The ST-80F and its companion Hi-Fi components sold by the
bucket load, which is even more impressive given that they weren’t cheap, and
the performance of the tuner, whilst generally rated as okay, didn’t exactly
excite the Hi-Fi reviewers of the day.
The ST-80F was an upgrade of the ST-80,
launched a year or so earlier. Outwardly they look the same but the F in the
model number denoted the use of newly developed and rather exotic Field Effect
Transistors (FETs) in the front end of the tuner, promising improved
sensitivity and reduced noise. What really makes it stand out though is on the
outside and that large circular tuning dial, with its soft green glow. It is
framed by a sleek yet understated brushed aluminium panel, sitting atop a
discrete control panel. But it’s not until you turn the tuning knob that you
realise where the all money went. Behind the scenes the knob is coupled to a
substantial flywheel, which drives a slow, precise and silky smooth pulley
mechanism that makes tuning stations a truly tactical treat. There’s also
added eye candy in the shape of a small tuning meter. Together they make it
look and feel like a precision instrument, rather just another joyless button
encrusted black box. 
Staying with the innards for a moment longer,
build quality is excellent, not to say vastly over-engineered for something
that will spend its entire working life sitting on a shelf. There really was no
need for all that heavy-duty metalwork, but if nothing else it meant that a
fair few of them have survived, which is more than can be said for most of its
rivals. The whole ensemble is housed in a simple but elegant wooden, teak
veneered case. It smells great too, more so when treated to a wipe over with a
good quality furniture wax. Around the back is a bank of screw terminals for
external AM and FM aerials, and in a slot at the top of the panel there’s a
mysterious black cylinder pokes out, that can be moved from left to right. This
turns out to be the tuner’s ferrite rod antenna for AM reception; the
adjustment allows the user to align it to the local transmitter for the best reception.
Short story short; I found it at a local car
boot sale; the asking price was £15, I offered a tenner and we settled on £11,
on the stallholder’s solemn promise that he had it working only the day before.
Normally I wouldn’t have bothered but it seemed to be in unusually good
condition and even if it didn’t work it looked smart enough to become the base
for wacky table lamp (only joking, though such atrocities have occurred!). I
needn’t have worried; following a thorough internal clean up and exterior
waxing, then a quick mains test, it was powered up and it worked, and worked
well. I can appreciate some of the comments in the reviews of the day, though.
It is by no means bad, far from it, but it really needs a good rooftop or loft
aerial to get the best out of FM reception, especially in a weak signal area.
To be fair it should be heard through its companion amplifier, the TA-88, and
matching Sony speakers, like SS-5088s. It’s on the to-do list and I ever manage
to get my hands on them, at a fair price, I will update this item. Who really
cares though? There’s pleasure to be had just twiddling that tuning knob and
watching the dial turn – yes, I really do need to get out more often…