Realistic Minimus-7
Overview
The Minimus-7 is a compact minispeaker. What it does with its volume is the reason collectors still hunt them four decades on.
What it does produce is midrange and treble of a quality that has no business coming out of a box this size.
These are not speakers you feed with a 200-watt monster amp and expect to survive. Matched to a modest receiver - which is exactly what Radio Shack sold alongside them - they'll play louder than their size suggests and stay composed doing it.
The Minimus-7's reputation for sounding bigger than it is starts here.
The Minimus-7 was originally priced at $49.95. As reported in HiFi-Stereo (June 1980, p.4), the August 1979 issue of Stereo Review judged the $49.95 Minimus-7 one of the best of the two-liter speakers and very much a bargain at its price.
Radio Shack's marketing through the mid-1980s positioned the Minimus line as the accessible end of a range that ran up to the Mach Two - "from the mighty Mach Two system to our widely acclaimed Minimus series," as the company's print advertising put it repeatedly across HiFi-Stereo and High Fidelity placements in 1986 and 1987. Millions of buyers chose Realistic speakers on that pitch, and the Minimus was the entry point for a lot of them.
Rarity is not what makes the Minimus-7 collectible now. Radio Shack moved enormous quantities. A pair in good condition will embarrass modern desktop speakers at the same price, and the ones that survived are usually still structurally sound, though the paint can chip and the grilles can dent.
The surviving Minimus-7 population is now maintained by hobbyists rather than the company that built it.
The Minimus-7 does one thing, accurate midrange and treble from a tiny box, and it does that thing better than the price ever suggested.
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