Magnavox CDB-480
A budget single-disc CD player that shows up in the back pages of 1989 hi-fi magazines at $139.95. That price says a lot about what Magnavox was doing in the CD boom.
Overview
The CDB-480 survives in the record mostly through dealer ads, not review columns. What the period print documents is a price. Mail-order listings in the audio press through 1989 quote the CDB-480 at $139.95, with street prices drifting between roughly $135 and $148 depending on the seller and the month. This was an entry-level Magnavox single-disc player at the bottom of a CD lineup that climbed steeply from there.
The dealer listings from that year lay out the ladder clearly. Above the CDB-480 sat the CDB-482 with a remote at $149.95, the CDB582 with remote at $199.95, the CDB473 with remote at $249.95, and the CDB586 16-bit CD changer at $279.95. The CDB-480 was the no-remote floor of that stack. Audio (April 1989, p.?) carried the CDB480 at $139.95 in its accessories and players listing, and the same figure recurs across the January and May 1989 issues. The price barely moved.
Anyone who runs across one today is looking at a plastic-front, mass-market player from the tail end of the first CD generation. It sold on price and brand reach, not audiophile ambition. It reads Red Book discs and has the transport and DAC of its moment. It was never meant to be the centerpiece of a serious system.
Key Features
The $139.95 Price Point
The most documented fact about the CDB-480 is what it cost. Across the 1989 dealer listings - Audio (January 1989, p.185), Audio (April 1989, p.102), and Audio (May 1989, p.?) - the CDB480 appears at $139.95, with one seller quoting $145 and another $148. That consistency across competing mail-order houses suggests a tightly controlled street price. For a buyer in 1989, this was the number that got you into a Magnavox single-disc player without a remote.
Single-Disc Transport, No Remote
The CDB-480 is a single-disc player, and the dealer listings set it apart from its siblings by noting "w/remote" on every model above it. The CDB-482, CDB582, and CDB473 all carry the remote designation. The CDB-480 does not. That's the clearest functional marker in the period record. If you wanted remote control from this lineup, you paid the extra ten dollars and up.
Position in the Magnavox CD Line
The 1989 listings place the CDB-480 at the base of a five-model Magnavox CD range: CDB-480, CDB-482, CDB582, CDB473, and CDB586 changer. It's the cheapest and least-featured of the group, and the dealers treated it as the entry ticket rather than the recommended buy. It was the model that got a Magnavox badge onto a shelf for under $150.
Historical Context
By early 1989 the CDB-480 was an established catalog item in the American mail-order audio trade, advertised alongside accessories, audiophile LPs, and record-care products in the back pages of Audio and HiFi-Stereo. The player appears in the "For CD Players" and "Magnavox CD Players" listings month after month, which suggests it was moving in volume through discount channels rather than sitting in specialist dealerships. Beyond that, the record is thin. The sources document the price and the lineup, not the design story.
Collectibility & Value
No meaningful collector market is documented for the CDB-480. It was a sub-$150 entry-level player sold through mail order, not a reference component. The 1989 dealer listings are the only pricing data available, and they show a commodity item with a fixed street price rather than a piece that appreciated. Expect the usual aging of a late-1980s CD transport, though the available documentation says nothing specific about it.
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