Homebrew Car Cassette Adapter

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TheNewGuy

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Howdy All,
I haven't been on since school started, so I've been kinda busy.

My mom has a cassette player in her car, she doesn't have a lot of cassette tapes, so I was thinking of getting her a Cassette adapter. But after some googleing, I've found a couple of articles on how to put together one yourself. But when I tried it with some copper wire I got out of an old bios speaker from a computer, I got ditto.

I was wondering if you guys could help me out?

The second link below said that you had to hook up resistors before the coil. But I was thinking since I was getting nothing, you probably want more power going through?

Here are the articles I've been looking at:
**broken link removed**
**broken link removed**

I cut up a headset, and each side of the headset had two wires on both sides one was copper and the other was a different color. I probably want to use the copper side?

I can post pics of everything if you guys want.

Thanks,
-TheNewGuy
 
Externet said:
A cassette tape player head.
Click to expand...

So I get a player head, connect it to an aux jack directly? Then I should be fine? So now the trick is where to find a tape head.

Is getting and using a tape head easier than the methods in the links above? It seems like it?
 
This Mickey-Mouse way of playing CDs through a cassette tape player will result in extremely boosted bass and the high frequencies reduced due to the tape playback equalization in all tape players. It will sound awful.
 

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audioguru said:
This Mickey-Mouse way of playing CDs through a cassette tape player will result in extremely boosted bass and the high frequencies reduced due to the tape playback equalization in all tape players. It will sound awful.
Click to expand...

Is this for cassette adapters in general, or just for this method of making your own adapter?

I wanna see if I can make it by myself and save $15 (that is the cheapest I found it for), plus you learn more doing it.
 
I showed you ther equalized frequency response of a cassette tape player. It boosts the bass very much. If your circuit does not correct the frequency response then it will sound awful.
 
$15! For about double that you can buy here a good used CD player from the pawn shop or online.
For the time and effort you will use to build an adapter you could work for someone doing basic chores and grunt work and make enough money to buy a good mid range CD/ MP3 player head unit.

I picked up a good near new pioneer 2900 series head unit for $45 on eBay for my dad last summer. It works perfect and sounds way better than his factory tape deck too!
 
audioguru said:
I showed you ther equalized frequency response of a cassette tape player. It boosts the bass very much. If your circuit does not correct the frequency response then it will sound awful.
Click to expand...

Ooops...

So:

1.)It is better to use a player head instead of a coil of magnet wire (30 gauge wire)
I think a player head would be more cleaner anyway.​

2.)I would need some sort of corrective circuit inside the tape player to correct the frequency response.
So I looked up "frequency response" and found this interesting article.​

So now I need to look up circuits that correct frequency response.

Please excuse my lack of knowledge on this subject.
-TheNewGuy
 
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A tape player has equalization to boost the bass up to 35dB which would sound awful if you used the Mickey-Mouse circuit. The tape recording reduces the bass to avoid overloading the tape head and tape then the player has bass boost equalization to make it sound normal.

You could add a fairly complicated circuit to correct the frequency response of an old Mickey-Mouse CD to cassette tape player gadget but why bother?

EDIT:
Deaf people posted Mickey-Mouse circuits that they cannot hear how bad they sound. Make one.
 
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Mickey Mouse lost his fame and fortune and went into research and development and re earned a name for himself.

But he wasn't very good at it and the name he earned isn't a compliment to anyones skills.

Cheap Chinese junk is another way or putting it.
So is 'All theory no reality'.
 

That sucks!
 
So a Mickey-Mouse circuit is something I would not want to put together in order to correct the frequency response.
 
Oh, I forgot to mention. Plugged into the cassette via an auxiliary jack will be a MP3 Player (RC125PA made by RCA).

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that this cassette player came in a car made in 2000.
 
Last edited:
The Mickey Mouse circuit does not have any electronics. It is just a coil of wire.
It does not have the bass-cut and treble boost circuit that is used in a tape recorder so your tape player will sound awful. It will also be played in mono, not in stereo.
 
I've never taken it apart because the case is fused and it still works so I'm not gonna destroy it to find out, but the cassette adapters that I have have some kind of passive electronic circuit inside, can't do a treble boost but I'm sure it can do a mid and bass cut that will give the same effect considering the primary purpose it would need serve is attenuate the signal to something the head can pickup without overpowering it. I'm not sure how the stereo coding is done, or even if it is I don't know how a tape pickup does stereo.
 
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