The Sharp GF-777 is widely renowned as among the most legendary boomboxes, with its big size, big sound, and iconic looks. It’s so popular, in fact, working units can still go for up to a couple of grand on eBay these days. The big problem? The darn thing eats D batteries, making it an absolute hassle to use these days. The Bumpboxx BB-777 takes inspiration from that classic ghetto blaster, albeit with modern updates to eliminate all that hassle.
At first glance, it looks exactly like the original GF-777, with the new speaker reprising the general design and many elements of the original. It’s not exactly a 1:1, so you can tell immediately it’s not real version of that Sharp boombox, but it takes on a very close likeness that makes it feel like a real portable stereo from that same era.
The Bumpboxx BB-777 is a modern retro boombox. As in, it’s a modern party speaker that you can use to stream music from your phone via Bluetooth, so you can just pair with it and blast your Spotify playlist any time. It also gets an AUX jack and a USB port, so you can plug in other modern audio sources with a wired connection. What makes it retro are the support for legacy media, specifically cassettes and CDs.
As you can tell from the product photos, this portable speaker also comes with two cassette decks, both of which are functional. That means, you can play a tape on one deck and record it on another, just like in the old days. If you wanted to relive the glory days of making mix tapes on the go, this will let you do that. It also has a CD player that can handle traditional audio dics, as well as CD-RW collections of MP3, WAV, AAC, WMA, and FLAC files, so this thing sounds like it can play anything short of a vinyl record.
The Bumpboxx BB-777 is also a powerful boombox that packs a whopping 270W system to deliver true room-filling audio. It has a three-way setup that combines two 6.25-inch full-range drivers, two horn tweeters, and two 6.25-inch isolated woofers underneath that internally chambered housing, complete with a fan-cooled amplifier. The system comes with physical bass, treble, balance, and volume knobs, echo and mic volume controls (yes, you can plug in a mic), and a 4.5-inch LCD where you can see the settings in real-time.
Instead of D batteries, it’s powered by a 97.6Wh Lithium ion module that can hold up to 15 hours’ worth of juice between charges. It can fill back up in four to six hours, although the battery is also swappable if you have a backup, so you can keep the music going. Other features include stereo pairing, record to USB (you can record songs as digital files through a connected storage), screw-on telescoping antennas (if you want to listen to the radio), snap-on magnetic front grille, a wireless remote, and three colorways (silver, red, and black).
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Bumpboxx BB-777. Pledges to reserve a unit start at $649.
