My New EH70

[sfbp]

My new (Used) EH70 - first impressions

I love the colour, it's a sort of far-deep purple, rather than blue or black which were the two options I concluded from looking at the announcements and the web image on Ebay.

Sadly as you can see it is scratched but I knew that from the description when purchasing, and I think the price is a fair reflection of the condition. So I will mainly focus on functionality, pointing out the many differences from any unit I have used before.

Certainly the sound is excellent, compares nicely with the RH1, and the digital amp is great. These are the only 2 units I have with this feature, so it certainly is a way to have HD amp listening without the possibility of wrecking the precious RH1. It plays everything from SP-60 to HiLP-1GB without apparent problems. I haven't tried any PCM because frankly I don't use it (PCM) for portable audio, only live recordings, which invariably just get burned on CD immediately. I'm not (yet) sure about the type-S feature which is supposed to be in every HiMD. My original impression was that Atrac3 (LP2 and LP4) didn't sound as good in the RH1 as they do in the NH700 or "original" NetMD machines; and this unit might be the same. This is only a fleeting impression and far from a controlled experiment, though.

There's no LCD display on the unit, which I didn't notice until I had it in my hand. No biggie but you absolutely need a remote if you want to see where you are on the current disk. I ran it with the RM-35ELK (had the option to choose between Kanji and Kanji-Kata, whatever that does), didn't check the RM38EL but I don't see why it shouldn't work too. A little red LED comes on when it's playing. Too bad I couldn't figure out how to get enough contrast but the remote socket is to the left of the LED.

  

The buttons are all on the back - volume up/down, play/stop and FF/REW as well as a hold switch.

 

There's no pause button on the unit. This means (among other things) that you cannot fast-forward by pausing and then holding >>| (or |<<) without the remote. Since you cannot see any counter I suppose that's totally logical

It works on gumstick NiMH. There is also a sidecar connector

  

(but I didn't get any accessories not even a battery or the sidecar), and I tested that it's possible to change either battery when the sidecar is connected without interrupting playback at all. I wish it had a charging socket but the whole thing here is that there is a charge stand which goes with it (and I don't have). No big deal as most people including myself have reported that wall chargers tend to charge the NiMH better anyway. Unlike some other units, the gumstick's battery door seems to work fine, and doesn't look as if it would come loose accidentally.

Unsurprisingly the screws (all 4 of them) were loose and needed tightening.

This is far from being an ad for the shop in Germany who sold it to me - but I will say that the delivery was fast, and I think they are to be relied upon. Packing was minimal but since the body is metal it's probably ok (I don't think the scratch came from shipping).

[Levanel]

I need a battery case for the EH70 too..

[sfbp]

I need a battery case for the EH70 too..

Luckily the standard battery case for every other model seems to fit. There seem to have been an infinity of charge stands but only one battery case. Please tell us if you find a seller with lots.

I only realised the double advantage of the battery case for recording purposes recently, namely that not only does the combo last longer - but you can switch either battery out without a recorder missing a beat. However I think there's only one super-long-time unit (ie. Hi-MD) that will do this, the NH900. I have definitely noticed issues with plugging NH700 (no sidecar available) into the mains (3V DC!) in order to change battery, it doesn't seem to work well at all. I saw some sort of glitch as I did it.

Found an ebay auction: 150345549868