Commodore Computers stereo system from the 1980s

Did you know that there was a Commodore-badged stereo system in the 1980s?

These were not actually readily available for purchase, but came as part of a package with the Amiga 500 (from memory). Most likely these were only on offer in the Australian market, but I could be wrong.

When I was working for a commodore retailer, we immediately split these from the bundles and sold them separately for $299 (again, from memory). Many of the staff bought them including myself. I had mine up until somewhere around 2010 when I sold it on eBay for probably next to nothing.

Commodore didn't actually manufacture these, of course. We worked out what record needle they used at some point and might have been able to infer the manufacturer based on that, but I no longer remember.

These systems featured an AM (mono)/FM (stereo) tuner, an amplifier with surround sound, auxiliary input, five band graphic equaliser, two-speed turntable, and a double cassette player/recorder.

Unfortunately the only photo I have is not very clear and I haven't been able to find any other photos online so I can't make out all of the features but I think the cassette allowed dubbing in both normal and high speed. It also had synchro dubbing (recording starts automatically when the player is started) and continuously play (not sure what this does - maybe when one cassette stops the other one starts).

I used my Commodore stereo a lot and it moved houses with me several times. When CDs became popular I connected up a CD player to it. I recall my only disappointment with it was that they level meter didn't really show any action unless the volume was turned up very high. In the 1980s we liked flashing lights and I wanted to see more of them. Turning the surround sound button didn't make much difference, if I remember correctly.

I remember that Commodore Australia bundled some other unusual items with Amigas around this time. I wish I could remember what else there was. Leave me a comment if you remember any other interesting bundles.

Update: I found a few old advertisements that mentioned this system. In January 1989 it was available for A$399 or A$1,399 as part of the Amiga 500 Mega Pack which included an A500, 1MB RAM and the Textcraft word processor (or $1,199 without the stereo). By February 1989 it had been reduced to $299.