A few weeks ago my old stereo that i had running every day for hours for over 10 years finally said goodbye. Its probably just a fuse, but it popped during normal usage, so i think its finally time to replace it (i already had to replace the big caps, because they were completely dead). The problem is, stereos cost money, and i dont like to spend too much at once. I got the old one from a fleamarket for 10 bucks, including 2 ceramic speaker boxes! It was an incredibly good deal. Sadly i managed to kill the woofer of one of those boxes (the voice coil detached from the cone). I tried reattaching it, and almost got it working... until i didnt detach it during a soundtest and the coil came loose again =/.
So for the last few weeks i had no audio, except my earbuds, and a smaller speaker that i directly attached to my soundcard. Luckily a friend found a very old amplifier in his attic and gave it to me. Its a 10W/15W 4-Channel amplifier. Of course thats not comparable to the old Stereo with its 250W each channel, but i set it up today and it works :D
As its an old amp, it uses old connections. my stereo hat cinch as inputs and and these clamps for the speaker cables. This one instead has 5 pole connectors for input and those old speaker connectors with the big, flat contanct in the middle. I had several of these speaker connectors in the basement, but i was lacking something that could connect my computer to a 5 pin connector.
For years i only had a mono connection to my stereo, because i had no cable with 3 leads available at the time i got it. But i found a 5 lead cable in the basement that i can use. Now i also had an old 5 pin connector cable around, that i got from a microphone for a big tape recorder. The microphone was essentially a little speaker. This connector had a little transformer inside the plug, which is probably there to protect the microphone from the high voltage from the tape recorder it came with. Also this microphone was mono, but had 4 leads in its cable. So i detached the transformer and resoldered the 4 pin wire to the connector. I used 1 lead for ground (pin 2), 2 pins for stereo play (pins 3 and 5) and one pin for mono record (pin 1). I didnt attach the last lead to my computer, because that made no sense. I just soldered it to the plug because i didnt want it to fly around. Then i soldered the cable of the plug to the 5 lead cable and the 5 lead cable to my stereo cinch cable that i had from my stereo, which i uses to connect my computer to the aux input (i now have 2 free leads in the 5 lead cable, for other uses).
My stereo had a contact switch that switched on a relay to power the stereo, but the old amp has some rotational switch for that. As i plan to use this amp for some time, i dont want to put too much stress on this switch (i switch it on and off at least once a day), so i attached an old lightswitch to the mains cable and put the amps switch in the on position.
I plugged everything together and it works :D
I now only have to put the new cable in the cable duct and everything is finished
