Sanyo DAD 8

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 but with a Toshiba laser-block and mostly Sony ICs.

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 USA version of the Fisher AD-800 was black, the worldwide version was silver 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 were champagne in color 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.


Nudies aplenty and all about the Sanyo family at the indispensable vintage-audio-laser.com.