Cassette Adapter Quest

Living Up To "Stumbling Through Technology..."

I've been a big user of cassette adapters to bring the audio out of my mp3 player, and into my car's audio system. The first one I acquired was part of a package deal, and was included in the purchase of a portable CD player. While I don't use the CD player anymore, the cassette adapter still found use for the last five years. Over the summer, the wire weakened, and I was getting that scratchy sound which signaled a replacement. Simple enough, huh? Not really!

I decided to head on over to Wal-Mart, and pick up their cassette adapter. It's a Philips model and for $10 it was reasonable enough. In fact, it was the only brand they sold on this device, so there was not much shopping involved, and it was more of a take it or leave it purchase.

I popped it into the car stereo, and immediately noticed something weird happening. All the audio was coming out of the left speaker- annoying. Make that very annoying. I finally was able to kind of balance it, but even at R5 (out of a possible seven) it was still somewhat right biased, and at R6 there was nothing coming out of the left. Hmmm. I try another music player, and it's the identical problem. Clearly, I got a defective product.

Gotta love the Wally Mart return policy, so I grab my receipt and return to the store. I give it back, and grab another one, mildly frustrated that I can't choose another brand, but I know that Best Buy sells Sony for twice as much last time I looked, and it's all made in China anyway, probably on the same assembly line.

Back to the car, the same thing happens again. There's way too much music on the left, and nothing on the right. Adjusting the balance, and again R5 is not enough, and R6 is too much (R7 is the max on this stereo). I'm guessing that Wal-Mart has a defective batch as I never had this issue with the previous adapter and it was always balanced.

I think about this, and start to wonder if it's my cassette deck. Maybe the best strategy is to fix the one I have. After all, aside from the weakened wire at the stereo plug, the rest of the adapter is working fine. Where can I get a new stereo plug? I know, I'll head on over to Radio Shack, they sell all kinds of electronic doo dads, so how much can they charge me for this?

I only go to Radio Shack about once a decade. Clearly the store has changed. I even bring the old adapter to show the problem. A pleasant college kid is behind the counter in an empty store. I explain the issue. "Yeah, I know what you're looking for, but we don't sell stuff like that anymore," he replies. Too bad. Where the doo dads were is now replaced by an iPod accessory kiosk, and a cell phone area. Changing times, and not for the better.

He then tells me that he an an Accurian cassette adapter on sale. After I tell him that I've never heard of that brand, he tells me it's the in house brand. Ok, I'll give it a try, wondering how long before this gets returned at the rate I'm going. Catching a break, it's also on sale for the same $10 that I was paying at Wal-Mart (regularly $20).

I then head back to the car's stereo and give it a try. I run through a few tracks and all balances fine, just as good as on my previous one (which was an Audiovox which I only paid $20 for- with a CD player and headphones!). I am relieved, and wondering how Philips could have made a whole bad batch of these, and how come no one seems to be noticing it?

My other observation is that it's really too bad that Radio Shack just has basically the same stuff as the other guys, and not the basic parts for building and fixing stuff. While they did have a superior product in this case, I did miss the doo dads wall, and I wonder how many other old timers would rather have that in there instead of a cell phone kiosk, especially when there is one every twenty feet these days.

--Jonas