{"id":188655,"date":"2026-02-22T09:35:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/188655\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T09:35:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:35:29","slug":"in-a-frenetic-digital-era-hes-helping-angelenos-rediscover-the-classic-cassette-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/188655\/","title":{"rendered":"In a frenetic digital era, he’s helping Angelenos rediscover the classic cassette player"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stepping into Jr. Market boutique in Highland Park is like entering a 1980s time warp. Built into a refurbished shipping container, it\u2019s filled with everything from tiny Walkman-style portables to colorful, number-flip clock radios and, naturally, boomboxes of all sizes. Few are more imposing than the TV the Searcher, a Sharp boombox from the early \u201880s that features a built-in, 5-inch color television.<\/p>\n

\u201cTry lifting it, it\u2019s really heavy,\u201d warns Spencer Richardson, the shop\u2019s owner. Indeed, the machine is at least 15 pounds without the 10 D batteries that power the unit. He adds, \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re taking this to the beach so you could watch TV while you listen to music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

An affable, hyper-knowledgeable proprietor in his early 30s, Richardson repairs and resells analog music technology from the 1980s or earlier. In bringing these rehabbed players back into circulation, he\u2019s helping others rediscover a musical format once left for dead. While his hobby-turned-side hustle started as \u201ca gateway to discover sounds\u201d that he otherwise would not have heard, it now attracts curious customers willing to drop $100-plus for a vintage Technics RS-M2 or My First Sony Walkman. His customers include older baby boomers and Gen X\u2011ers nostalgic for the players of their childhood, but most have been millennials like himself, drawn to something tactile and analog in an era when everything else disappears into the digital ether.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A rare Technics RS-M2 stereo radio tape deck. \u201cI\u2019ve worked on a lot of tape players and this one shouts quality inside and out,\u201d Richardson writes on Instagram. <\/p>\n

(Spencer Richardson)<\/p>\n

Unlike turntables, which have become increasingly high-tech thanks to the \u201cvinyl revival\u201d of the last 20 years, almost all cassette players in current production rely on the same, basic tape mechanism from Taiwan, Richardson explains. Though cassette culture is enjoying its own period of rediscovery \u2014 albeit on a far smaller scale \u2014 he hasn\u2019t seen a market emerge for newly engineered tape decks. And he\u2019s fine with that. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not one of those people that\u2019s like, \u2018Why don\u2019t they make good new tape players?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cNo one needs to make it better. You\u2019re still better off buying a refurbished one from the time when they made them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where he steps in.<\/p>\n

\"Richardson <\/p>\n

Richardson works on a Nakamichi tape deck out of his repair studio in downtown L.A. <\/p>\n

(Genaro Molina \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to forget that when cassettes debuted in the mid-1960s, the technology was groundbreaking. Not only were the players far more portable than turntables but unlike records, tapes were resilient to being tossed about. Even more profoundly, cassettes democratized access to the act of recording itself since cassette technology required minimal infrastructure and cost. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think about how incredible it must have been for people to realize they could just put whatever they wanted onto a tape, dub it, give it to a friend,\u201d says Richardson. <\/p>\n

Entire genres of music, especially in the developing world, became far more accessible across borders. In some countries, big records are still released on cassette. \u201cI have a Filipino release of Kanye West\u2019s \u2018College Dropout\u2019 on tape,\u201d Richardson says.<\/p>\n

The constraints of the technology guided the listening experience. Because skipping songs on a player was a hassle, most people sat with cassette albums as a track-by-track, linear journey, the antithesis to the algorithmic, shuffle-centric playlists ubiquitous on today\u2019s streaming platforms. It\u2019s a pace that Richardson appreciates. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want things to be intentional and slow,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t need them to be optimized.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"He <\/p>\n

He learned how to repair gear by watching YouTube videos, perusing old manuals and through trial and error. <\/p>\n

(Genaro Molina \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Born in the early 1990s, Richardson grew up in Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades, where his mother\u2019s home was lost in the L.A. wildfires last year. He\u2019s just old enough to remember cassettes as a child: \u201cMy mom had books on tape like \u2018Winnie the Pooh,\u2019 but I wasn\u2019t out buying tapes.\u201d Fast forward to the mid-2010s and he was working at the now-defunct Touch Vinyl in West L.A. \u201cBack in 2014, we started this little in-store tape label,\u201d he explained. \u201cBands would come to play, and we\u2019d duplicate 10 tapes and give them away or sell them.\u201d Richardson slowly began collecting cassettes but after the store closed a few years later, he realized how hard it was to find people to service his tape players.<\/p>\n

Finally, once the pandemic hit in 2020 and everyone was stuck at home, he decided to learn how to repair his gear by watching YouTube.\u201cI was just fascinated by the videos, absorbing soldering techniques and tools you might need,\u201d he said. With no formal engineering background, Richardson began collecting information online, perusing old manuals, learning through trial and error. \u201cYou just need to get your hands in there and be like, \u2018Oh, OK, I see how this works,\u2019 or maybe I don\u2019t see how this works, and I\u2019m just going to bang my head against the wall, and then a year later, try again.\u201d His first successful repair was for his Teac CX-311, a compact stereo cassette player\/recorder that he still owns. \u201cIt has some quirks but runs well.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years later, Richardson\u2019s girlfriend, Faith, suggested he start selling his players online via an Instagram account \u2014 jrmarket.radio \u2014 originally created for a short-lived internet station. Tim Mahoney, his childhood friend and a professional photographer, shot the units against a plain white backdrop, as if for an art catalog. A community of enthusiasts quickly found his account and Richardson began selling pieces online and via pop-ups. In 2024, the owners of vintage clothing store the Bearded Beagle invited him to take over the parking lot space behind their new location on Figueroa St. Opening a brick-and-mortar store hadn\u2019t been his ambition but Richardson accepted the opportunity: \u201cI never envisioned opening my own physical store. It\u2019s hard enough to have a retail space in Los Angeles to sell something that\u2019s very niche.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jr. <\/p>\n

Jr. Market operates as a shop Thursday through Saturday in Highland Park.<\/p>\n

(Spencer Richardson)<\/p>\n

Jr. Market \u2014 whose name is inspired by Japanese convenience stores known as \u201cjunior markets\u201d \u2014 isn\u2019t trying to appeal to audiophiles though Richardson does stock studio-quality recording decks. He primarily looks for players with appealing visual design, most of them made in Japan where Richardson has been traveling to since graduating high school. Through those trips, he\u2019s learned where to source pristinely-kept gear, including his best-selling Corocasse: a bright red plastic cube of a radio\/tape player, introduced by National in 1983. He also keeps an eye out for the unique Sanyo MR-QF4 from 1979, an elongated boombox with four speakers, designed to play either horizontally or flipped into a vertical tower.<\/p>\n

The store also stocks a small selection of portable record players, including a Viktor PK-2, a whimsical, plastic-bodied three-in-one turntable, tape player and AM radio that looks like something designed by a modernist artist for Fisher-Price. That went to local author and historian Sam Sweet, who visited the store with no intention of buying anything and left with the Viktor, which now sits on his writing desk. \u201cSpencer\u2019s part of a grand tradition of workshop tinkerers and specialty mechanics,\u201d Sweet says. \u201cThe refurbished devices he sells are as much a reflection of his ethos and expertise as they are treasures of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Imma Almourzaeva, an Echo Park art director, came to the store and purchased a massive 1979 Sony \u201cZilba\u2019p\u201d boombox, which is nearly 2 feet wide and over a foot tall, with wood veneer panels to boot. Almourzaeva, who grew up in Russia in the \u201890s, wanted a player that offered \u201cthe tactile feel of my childhood and bringing it back into my daily routine, something familiar, something warm.\u201d The Zilba\u2019p is the largest boombox Richardson has carried and Almourzaeva said, \u201cIt\u2019s aesthetically a showstopper. Maybe I have a Napoleon complex because I\u2019m pretty small too. It\u2019s like \u2018go big or go home\u2019 for me.\u201d She shared that she recently bought a Soviet-era boombox from Richardson for her brother for Christmas. \u201cIt turned out my mom grew up using the same brand of stereo,\u201d Almourzaeva says. Richardson had told her that Soviet boomboxes are \u201cvery DIY, more funky and finicky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refurbishment is one of Richardson\u2019s specialties, including repairing customer units, each of them a puzzle he enjoys solving. No matter if a player is sparse or feature-packed, the simple act of playing a cassette creates a sense of calm and focus for him. \u201cYou\u2019re not distracted, because it doesn\u2019t do anything else,\u201d he says. In a time where every \u201csmart\u201d device is marketed with dizzying arrays of features, that simplicity can feel downright revolutionary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stepping into Jr. Market boutique in Highland Park is like entering a 1980s time warp. Built into a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[88601,1729,88604,88603,48,52,51,7036,47,50,49,592,4201,88600,88599,88605,826,88602,1970,3226,72],"class_list":["post-188655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-cassette","tag-childhood","tag-good-new-tape-player","tag-imma-almourzaeva","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-year","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-people","tag-radio","tag-rehabbed-player","tag-richardson-repair","tag-sharp-boombox","tag-store","tag-tape-deck","tag-technology","tag-unit","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}