DOWNSIZING SOUNDS GOOD

The entertainment system on board BIANKA is not elaborate. For over decade it was a Panasonic RX-DS7 boom box. The unit had a CD player, AM/FM radio and even a cassette player. Yes, I still have some cassettes. Unfortunately, the unit over the years has gotten a little beat up which included a few falls to the cabin floor.

It's got a couple of dents in the speaker grill. The CD had also become non functional and developed a raspy sound in it's speakers. The reason why I found out on closer inspection is that one of the speakers  had broken away from it's mounting:

Obviously after ten plus years it was time for a new unit.  So the other day I made an impulse buy and bought a new "entertainment center" for the boat. It is a GPX CD/Radio/MP3  Boombox   .
It is a basic unit that has no cassette player but, does have a line input so I could plug in my MP3 player or even a cassette player if I ever wanted too. It also has a digital tuner as compared to the old Panasonic unit which had a linear tuning system:

The GPX CD/Radio/MP3 input Boombox   is also much smaller that the Panasonic it is replacing:

On a thirty foot boat like BIANKA having smaller items in the cabin is a good thing. I also modified the GPX so I could hook it into the 12 volt to 9 volt power supply I built to power the Panasonic unit:

I also added Anderson Powerpole connectors to the GPX  unit and power supply making it easy to disconnect and secure the box while underway:

. The unit sounds good and fits easily on the shelf I built for the Panasonic unit:

While I tend to not play the radio or CD too often on board preferring to keep an ear out for the cry of the Osprey or other sounds. Still it's nice to have some tunes available from time to time. The first CD I played on the unit was John Renbourn's The Hermit which is an excellent CD for listening to on board on a tranquil summer evening. Hopefully this unit will last as long as the previous "entertainment center" on board.