Car Cassette Tape Adapter

A car cassette tape adaptor allows you to listen to your music from iPod, android, mp3, PC, phone…

A real cassette of the old times had tape reel which was read by a reading head, but an adapter have a transmitting head instead. The transmitting head is connected to an input cord which connects the head – a 3.5mm audio jack – to a portable device with a 3.5mm audio port.

If you open your adapter you’ll see the mechanism that simulates tape movement, which are a system of gears. Nothing interesting here, except that this things spin continuously...

To use a car cassette tape adapter you must connect the device (iPod, CDplayer, iPhone…) to the adapter via the input cord.

Insert the car into the radio.

Turn on the radio. Choose your favorite song or audio from the device and hear it clear on your car speakers.

For those of you techies, this is what happens:

1- An electronic signal travels through the input cord from the device to the transmitting head.

2- The signal is then converted to a magnetic field read by the cassette deck.

3- The cassette deck converts the signal back to an electronic signal and sent it to your car’s speakers.

4- The car’s speakers interprets the signal and (voila!) you hear your song through the speakers.  

Advantages

The only and great advantage of a Car cassette adapter is the ability to hear your songs on old cars with cassette stereos. Is cheap, because this adapters cost less than $15.00 (you can also buy them from China at $0.99 on eBay.) The alternative is to change the radio, which can be quite expensive (depending on the car stereo you want – range $20.00-$200.00+)

Cons

“Auto-reverse flip-flop”

The cassettes has 2 sides, and a stereo able to turn from one side to the other automatically was a great thing. The alternative was to eject the cassette, turn it and insert it again. The stereos with this setup will have the following words on them: “Auto-reverse”.

This stereos will do something weird with a never-ending adapter. The stereo will try to do the same, find another side. But an adapter don’t have TWO SIDES or an END, but the car stereo doesn’t understand that and it will continue ad infinitum trying to find the other side.

The way to fix the “Auto-reverse flip flop” seems to be by removing a plate that swivels up and down, which is inside the Cassette. You must remove the “lid”, remove the plate and close it up again. Use the adapter and the problem is solved.

The complete instructions here.