footmobile

I sourced original Sony gumstick batteries from Japanese electronics stores like yamada denki (yamada denkiweb) as recently as 3 years ago but it looks like stock is drying up these days. Still mint in packet Sony nh-14wm floating around Japanese webstores for not too crazy prices: http://store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp/sound11/1-756-194-12.html?sc_e=afvc_shp Use a proxy and order 2 or 3 for legacy.

Great to hear. I mean people these days go to so much trouble to get their ipods/DAPs to sound good with off-board headphone amps and awkward rubber bands, whereas simply playing PCM back on an RH-1 through decent IEMs gives such incredible sound. No need for off board amping if you have a non volume limited unit, packs plenty of power. Why do people feel they have to use the latest technology just because it's the latest? It's so obviously gimped with all the modifications they have to make to make it sound good. The RH-1 and all hi-end Sony audio gear is actually made by people that understand music and audio, not just industrial design and "apps" (ipod).

Life is short, use your RH-1 as much as you can, handle with care but don't be afraid to take it out and enjoy it. I carried mine around for 5 years always in its sony bag, carefully stashed in my carry, rocking glorious PCM through Sony EX-700 IEMs. Best 5 years of my portable audio life. I decided to move the RH-1 on and focus on original MD recently. I sold the RH-1 for a good price because of its pristine condition. Handle with care, but USE it, it's supposed to be used and it IS a PORTABLE unit..!! Paul, how is your RH-1? The supplied earphones are actually decent but I hope you have something even better to truly bring out its brilliance.

Managed to get these off ebay for a ridiculous price (half as ridiculous than what he was originally asking, but still ridiculous), the two black units hold 48 MDs each, double that if you place caseless MDs under the cased ones. The travel "pallete case" holds 12 discs without cases. Never seen these before nor can I find any record of them ever existing online but they say official Sony coolness to me, had to have em.

the best thing about Sharps was the old G-shock style remote imo. Never had one or listened to one but always wanted one of those EL remotes to attach to my jacket.

Great haul, particularly jealous of the Lavelle and Shadow live recordings. No, don't record over them, they look really unique.

Firstly thanks so much for the detailed advice Richard, I'm grateful. I finally got a chance to try out running x-application in applocale in nihongo. There was no change for me so I tried to actually reinstall x-application running the installer with applocale. That didn't work. So then I just did a normal fresh install of x-application. For some reason with this install I have japanese characters back on my walkman remote (model MC35ELK). I still have to manually select the artist and album on the x-application window but unlike before it now displays properly on the walkman itself. I have no idea why. I don't understand computers and long for a simpler time when I plugged an optical cable into my discman and MD walkman and manually entered track data!! Might go back to that! but the wonders of gracenote are just too good perhaps? So problem solved for me. Thanks again!

Thanks for your post Richard. Ah, a virtual machine fix. I will try it out and report back here.

I own a lot of Japanese music and transferring my .wavs to my MZ-RH1 from my Japanese market VAIO used to copy over the Japanese characters so they could be read both in the x-appli menu connected device track list and on the remote of the MZ-RH1 itself. My Japanese VAIO recently died and I bought an Australian VAIO. Have X-appli installed on that now and it displays my Japanese .wavs with full track information in Japanese but won't copy over the Japanese track data to my MZ-RH1. It just displays "????" instead both on screen in the connected device track list and on the remote. Is there any work around for this so I can get full kanji and kana on my Hi-MDs again? Good to be here btw, got my first MD walkman in '95, went to the darkside in '05 with an ipod, it made me hate music, I threw it into the ocean and went straight back to MD. Haven't looked back!