Dear folks,
This message reveals my idiocy about circuit design, because I suspect this is about as simple as grade-school electronics.
I'm trying to do something. Through various family trades, I now own an old console radio that was made in 1949, it doesn't work, and Mike Missal says to get it working would cost about $500. The radio tunes in AM only. Master Mike made a worthy suggestion. He said to try listening to AM only on my other radios for about a week, and that will help me decide whether or not to fix this console radio. Well, he was right. AM is all talk radio and ballgames, and I've no time or interest in either. I'm also not interested in spending $500 to get an old console radio going. My main reason for wanting this old radio to work is because it was bought by my paternal grandfather, and he used it up until when he died. That was about 45 years ago. I know it was still working about 35 years ago, but now ... it's all a shambles of ancient parts.
What I want to do is this. Buy a Tivoli "Model One" solid-state radio which has a stereo signal out. Run a wire from that stereo signal out to a mono 15-watt Pyle amp that has its own volume control, and run it to the console's 10-inch speaker. I would leave the volume control to the "Model One" turned all the way down, and let the radio, with Pyle amp, drive the speaker of the old Airline (that's the brand) console. This way, I haven't gutted it, and if someone in the future wants to rebuild it, then they can.
But here's where the problem comes in. There are various opinions about going from stereo to mono. Some people say to just use a plain adaptor, via wire. Others say this will scramble the signal. Back when I played in rock-'n-roll bands many years ago, we did this with professional amps, and we noted that the signal would get scrambled if the wires were short, but not if they were long. Well; for this application, I'd rather not have wire runs of 30 feet.
Some people have said I need to install diodes across each hot "out" to keep from scrambling the signal. But I don't even know what a diode is. People have explained it, and I only understand it for about two minutes. Then it's all forgotten. Others say I need two resistors, or the signal will be too strong. Other say I need both diodes and resistors. Others say I need nothing.
My dad was a cavalry man in WWII, and he was never reluctant about stating his opinion on something, and this is the kind of scenario where he would have said, "I'm dealing with a situation where there are more opinions than assholes." Well, my approach is a tad more genteel, but I'm not only uncertain about what to do, I'm also flabbergasted about the variety of perspectives on what seems (sic) to me a simple situation.
Can anyone out there with claims to circuit-design omniscience give some worthy advice?
Thank you for any help!
Very truly,
Francis Baumli
P.S. With my son, we did try going from his MP-3 player to headphones, i.e., going to mono, which meant going to only one earpiece of the headphone. The signal seemed slightly scrambled, and detail definitely was lost. So going the bare wire conversion does not seem promising.
