YO! I haven't been on here as obsessivly as I usually am because I have been getting ready to go on a nice little vacation with the family! Aruba baby!

...Anyway, I took a Panasonic 5010 that I had collecting dust and modified to bring along for some ipod support (in style! No iHome for me baby!)It now accepts a line in through a 3.5 mm jack. Rather than solder it to the backside of the main board I attached it directly beneath the tape head. My problem though is the ground. Everything is soldiered on well, but the only thing is there was some copper wires outside of the shielding foil right beneath the rubber coating of the mini jack cable. I just clipped those. I wonder if I attached them to some metal in the case if it would improve the ground?

Any thoughts?

What do you do ?
Do you remove the head of the BBX

or

Do you put a transducer (another head) against the BBX's head to get a magntic link (like a car-stereo adapter).

If the first is complex since gain is too high, so a line out will clip rougly. Then is has some eq network to compensate the dinamyc range of the tape media itself. So you need less gain and cancel this equialization.
Ground is tipically any metal area of the tape mecha (the screen of the head cables are tied to the metal of the mecha).
But signal feeding head amp most be trough the white and pink cables. I'm not sure but white is like ground while playback, and pink the signal. Each pair of white and pink is one channel input.

Pedro.

Ok here's exactly what I have done.

I used a very good quality monster cable. I stripped it to expose the 3 wires inside and the frayed outer wire. I soldered wire V's onto the 3 to make 6 (two fro each channel; white and pink, and two grounds.) I attached the 2 right and 2 left channel to the pink and white wires and finally the two grounds to the ground from the head (the black wires) It sounds great but sometimes there is a hiss (bad ground) that changes if you touch it. I think I will try ad ground that frayed wire that was in the casing of the cabel as well.

Hey C.D.

Here's a solution that requires no mod and may be good to just have around...

Cassette MP3 player

You can store your music on SD memory and play directly through the tape head. This is a great device for boxes that have belt issues but with working heads.

The only mod I'd consider with one of these is to maybe disable the tape drive motors to reduce battery drainage.

I have the Digisette Duo, which has a metal case but is otherwise quite similar... and it sounds really good on all of my boxes. No messing with cables or those little 3.5mm plugs.

I only saw two of these on ePay and cannot vouch for the seller.

Enjoy the trip. Aruba sounds great!

jt

Thanks JT! If I can find one by Sunday I'll be stoked!

Lets see, you mean that while you have 2 wires soldered at the same point at the monster cable, and this cables are connected to the white and to the pink ?. If YES, you have shorcircuited the white with the pink, no signal to the head amp ... perhaps thanks to the grounding issue still get enough signal to make sound. But gain of the head amp is TOO LARGE, putting a line out in it would clip (reach the max output) at min volume position. I guees that white and pink shortcircuited ...
White is like a ground and pink signal.

PD: Buy a i931 that's Ipod enabled and send the Panasonic to me, makes two people happy.

just take the ipod enabled kaboom just have fun out there in the beach.....