Dear people,
My paternal grandfather's old console radio finally ended up in my hands. It's a 1949 Airline (made one year after I was born), and I remember listening to its wooly, boomy sound when I was a very small child.
It stopped working about 35 years ago, and now that it's in my hands, it really shows decay.
Mike Missal suggested that rebuilding it would cost about $500. But he noted that it is AM only, and suggested I try listening to AM only for a week before going ahead with the project. Well; Master Mike was right. AM is mostly talk radio and ballgames, neither of which interest me, so I definitely do not want to go with a rebuild. (Neither does my checking account.)
What I'm wanting to do is use a Tivoli "Model One" radio which has a single mono speaker, and a signal out jack. Unfortunately, the signal out is stereo. I want to run this stereo signal to mono, plug it into the 1/8th" input of a 15-watt Pyle amp that has its own volume control, and thus be using the Tivoli as a receiver (with its volume control off), and run its signal into the Pyle amp which would be pushinig the console's 10-inch driver.
But there is a problem. How to convert stereo to mono? I've had many perspectives. One is to just "Y" the two stereo signals together. But some warn that this will scramble the signal. We used to do this with professional sound systems back when I worked as a musician, and we noted it tended to work fine when the wire runs were long (like 30 feet), but the two stereo signals would scramble into each other when the wire runs were short. My son attempted to do it this way with his MP3 player and headphones. The signal went to one ear only, of course. It didn't sound scrambled, exactly, but it had lost all detail--as if one channel was out of phase with the other and was canceling it at the upper frequencies. So people have offered more advice. Some say to use a diode across each positive lead, but I'm not sure what value, or how to wire it in. Others say I have to use a resistor on each lead, or the volume will be way too high. Others say I should use both a diode and a resistor. Others say this will cause even more problems.
Well; I'm an amateur when it comes to circuit matters. I don't even know what a diode is. It's been explained to me, but I understand for about two minutes, and then my concept becomes a mush.
I would think there would be a converter, made commercially, for this kind of thing but I sure can't find one on the Internet.
So I am asking (pleading): Is there anyone in our Society who has omniscience on this matter, and can give me advice as to what to do? If your explanation is overly technical, don't worry. I can find someone to figure it out for me.
Any help on this would be appreciated. I want to assemble something, not experiment. Especially given that it is a matter which, for an audiophile well-versed in these concepts, would be quite elementary.
I will appreciate all the help you can generously give.
All the best,
Francis Baumli
