Sanyo DAD 8
OTTO DAD 8
(1983 - 1984)

Part of the less remembered 1st generation CD players, the DAD 8 was the smaller one in Sanyo's rapidly growing lineup. The big one was the DAD M15, also available as Fisher AD 850. Not surprisingly, both were Sanyo-made originals.

Now, take a deep breath: the DAD 8 was available in Japan under Sanyo's original OTTO sub-brand but with a different name: DAD-03. Elsewhere, the DAD 8 was also available as Fisher AD 800 which, in Japan was the... Sanyo DAD 8! The US version of the Fisher AD 800 was black, the worldwide version was silver as above but for a black transport pad and silver direct access pads. And if that weren't enough, besides the original Sanyo and the OTTO plus Fisher versions, the DAD 8 was available in Europe as Siemens RW 725, ITT Hifi9015 and Oceanic HiFi9015, the latter two in champagne colour with a dark grey door, the former having its lower part in silver and the upper in dark grey... How to make simple when you can have so much fun with complex production complexities ? The color scheme best fitting the original design is without any doubt the black USA Fisher AD 800 version - unfortunately very rare.

Apart from all this busy business, none of these sold as well as the Hitachi clones or the Philips and Sony bestsellers. Also, the plastic pads seem to yellow a lot with the passing years.