Getting my Infinity I stereo to play cassette Aux cable?

MoparKidD-4

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2017
Messages
114
Reaction score
19
Location
Fort Collins, CO
So I have one of those Auxiliary cables for car audio systems that's made into a cassette housing so you can play music off your phone, etc. on an older cassette deck. I tried using it in my 1988 Fifth Avenue system and it seems like the "Auto Reverse" feature is keeping it from playing correctly; it just keeps switching sides on the tape unless I crank the sound on my phone all the way up and play something loud like heavy metal lol. Seems like it works off monitoring the sound signal from the cassette? It would be nice to play my own tunes, FM radio drives me nuts with all the ads.

I might see if my town has one of those hipster-style record stores and go buy some old cassette tapes lol.
 

brotherGood

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2013
Messages
884
Reaction score
158
Location
Urbana OH
There are two options here..either replace the head unit with a modern setup, or head to walmart and pick up a radio adapter. It plugs into your device like an auxiliary cord would, but you just tune the adapter to a radio station and match it on the factory unit. I did that before getting my Bluetooth head unit in my truck.
 

BudW

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 4, 2012
Messages
5,121
Reaction score
1,485
Location
Oklahoma City
If I understand the question correctly, you have a (newer) factory Infiniti radio with an Aux jack (rear of radio) that you wish to employ?
BudW
 

89.Fifth

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2015
Messages
444
Reaction score
110
Location
New York, NY
DSCF3531.jpg


If your radio has an 8 Pin Din in the back as show in the pic above, then you can wire up an AUX cable by splicing a solderable Din connector and a 3.5mm cable. The center pins (magenta/yellow) are ground and the outer pins (green/cyan) are left and right. Don't ask me which is which, I forget!

Which ground pin you use depends on your car. I used the yellow pin and got some hiss but no coil whine, others have reported the opposite.

This is the connector I ordered. Plenty of chances to redo in case you screw up the soldering.

6 pcs 8 Pin DIN Plug Connector with black Plastic Handle Male
 

MoparKidD-4

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2017
Messages
114
Reaction score
19
Location
Fort Collins, CO
Getting back to this issue... I bought some old cassettes for super cheap to test out the deck, apparently there's a problem with it only being able to play Side B on tapes; whenever you switch to Side A it's just a bit of white noise with some super quiet music for a few seconds then it automatically switches back to Side B. Regardless I'm going to pull the tape deck out and see if I can fiddle with it, if I can't get it to work I'll give that DIN connector a shot. I'm sure there's a video somewhere on YouTube on how to manually clean cassette decks lol.
 

MoparKidD-4

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2017
Messages
114
Reaction score
19
Location
Fort Collins, CO
OK so I figured it out, first off I pulled the head unit and looked on the back, no DIN port unfortunately. However I realized after doing some research on cassette players and messing with it some more that the tape head in the deck must be misaligned when it tries to play one side of the tape. SO to get around the problem I took apart my cassette-AUX adapter and flipped the "head" in that upside down as well as removed the goofy one-way auto-reverse roller so it would read the other direction and Voila! Now I have tunes through my original 1988 vintage tape deck lol.
 
Back
Top