A nameless transistor radio, I believe. Though I loved my parent's "Hi Fi" and listened to my Dad's jazz records (78s) on it.

ChannelMaster AM/FM/Weather/TV transistor radio.

My dad smoked Garcia Y Vega cigars, and they had promotions kind of like the old Green Stamps. If you saved enough cigar bands, you could redeem them for merchandise. ChannelMaster was the electronics "house brand" for the catalog we ordered out of. This was ca. 1970.

I remember my sister and I listening to Blondie and the Top Gun soundtrack on 8-track. I did have a kiddie tape player (large, colorful, plastic) that could record, but was not a radio. I would make mix tapes by putting the mic up to the TV speaker and recording songs from movies and shows. I also listened to a lot of my Mom's tapes - mostly Linda Ronstadt - on that player.

OMG... Channel Master (R) still exists!

A transistor radio. I remember the day I bought a Sony Walkman (the original, still have it, I thought I was so badass) and thinking......this is it, nothing will ever be as cool as this. It plays CASSETTE TAPES FOR GOD'S SAKE.

A 9 volt Panasonic transistor AM radio. WABC and WNBC top 40 stations.

I can't believe I found a picture of it- a cassette player exactly like this one.

Some years before that, my grandmother gave me a little AM radio about the size of a cigarette pack that was wrapped in KISS graphics, but we lived out in the sticks and all I could on it was country music, so I didn't use it much.

Wow great question! Mine was a Soundesign clock radio. The numbers were sort of like digital pages that flipped over. It was very cool. After lights out, I'd scroll the dial through the stations, AM and FM. Sometimes late at night I'd tune in something really exotic and faraway, like from New York City or Philly or even Canada (CKLW!!!). For a suburban Cleveland kid, this was exciting indeed.

mine was a cheap brown plastic 'transistor radio'

When I started school, I got my OWN clock radio. Plus, I had my own room on the bottom floor of our split-level while my parents had to SHARE theirs. So I could play rock music just as loud as I wanted (within reason) and no one would care!

A Conn trombone. We were so poor we had to make our own music.

I saved for months to buy a portable cassette player - it was bright red plastic, didn't have a radio and I thought it was the most awesome thing I'd ever owned. I used to record tapes by holding the mic to the radio speaker because I couldn't afford to buy any and took it with me everywhere I went.

First, it was a phonograph player that came with a set of Disney records as a subscription. My grandmother signed me up to get a Disney record a month - I still have a few. Then there was a sing-along disco-themed phonograph with a fake microphone - the mic had a little strip of copper inside which vibrated to give fake reverb when you sang into it.

Then, it was a white alarm clock-radio. When that spontaneously caught fire and burnt down the second floor of my family's house, eventually I got a small boom box with cassette player. I really wanted a Walkman, but of course they cost $110, so that was out of the question until much later. Later in high school I got an extra-long PINK boom box which I had for a long time. I replaced that with an even larger boom box, with double cassettes and detachable speakers, and had that until, well, um, last year. I was hanging onto it only for the cassette capabilities, but I finally bit the bullet and got rid of all but a few archival cassettes. In the meantime I also built a nice component system (phono-receiver-speakers-CD-DVD) from my dad's leftovers, and of course migrated mostly to iTunes/computer music anyway.

I used to record tapes by holding the mic to the radio speaker because I couldn't afford to buy any

Oh, me too! I had hours of tape which consisted of utterly miscellaneous songs with smeary, half-missed intros and DJs talking over the music.

When that spontaneously caught fire and burnt down the second floor of my family's house

Wow!

I had a Walkman-like object from when I was about 12, but the one that sticks in my mind is the small mono radio cassette player I had for Christmas at around the same time, which still works and is still at my parents' house. I remember it particularly because it was on that radio that I developed my BBC Radio 4 habit, which persists to this day. It saw me through several episodes of illness, stress and heartbreak.

I suppose my real first personal music device was the family piano, which I began learning aged 5, though :)

The most awesome bright yellow ball shaped AM/FM transistor radio with a flat end that it stood on and a chain because it was PORTABLE. I remember sitting outside in the summers with it waiting for our favorite songs to play. I still have it and it works, it's our emergency radio. I should take her picture, she's really a stunner.

OMG, Miko, now I remember my little portable phonograph. Boy, I loved that thing. It played 33s, 45s, and 78s, and the records I remember most include Judy Garland singing the songs from Wizard of Oz, and Danny Kaye singing his biggest hits. Every time I flipped its little lid up and put on a record, I felt like the coolest kid in creation. That was my first music device.

Miko, I'll have you know that my mother used her extra-long pink boom box until last year or so. She just refused to give that thing up, even though she never had any new tapes to play on it.

I ALWAYS wanted (and still want!) one of those Disney record player. I thought they were no big thing until I realized that players didn't automatically come with speakers attached. And I loved the little chime that played when you were supposed to turn the page.

Mostly, though, I loved playing 33 1/3 records at other speeds. To this day, I think Michael Sembello's "Maniac" from Flashdance sounds way better at 45.

I had one of these. Blue as I recall, so it probably wasn't Fischer Price
≡ Click to see image ≡

A really clunky casette player. I wore out the cassette of Peter Gabriel's fourth Peter Gabriel album on that thing.