I remember going skiing at Marmot Basin in Jasper, Alberta in January, 1979 with this guy who had a bulky and heavy tape recorder called Astraltunes strapped around his neck and around his chest. The headphones looked like those on a stethoscope. I tried it for a couple of runs, and was astounded how clear the sound was, and how not hearing the snow and wind anymore somehow tricked you into thinking you were going slower than you really were.
The Astraltunes was bulky and heavy though, and I asked him if it would be possible to have a pocket-sized tape recorder. Naw, he said. You'd get too much distortion.
I'm glad you posted this, because I had just spent two days racking my brain to try to remember the brand name of
exactly that (I was getting it confused with the
Bone Phone).
When I was a teenager, and gadgets such as this were out of reach of my pocket money. Therefore, I built my own lame imitation using a monoaural
Radio Shack casette player in a WWII surplus chest-mounted
gas mask bag and a set of
metal-detector headphones. I looked like a complete idiot.
My sister eventually got herself the family's first
Walkman. I later trumped her by buying the
smaller metal WM-2 version that came out a bit later ... a really nice piece of industrial design that still works flawlessly today.
