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I have a tape deck in my car which only gets used to read one of those dummy tapes that feeds from a 3.5mm headphone jack. I have no use for a CD player and would not like (nor can I afford) a new head unit. I was wondering if there is a reasonably strait-forward way to expose some sort of auxiliary input for hooking up an mp3 player?

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2 Answers

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What you need is an FM modulator -- a device that you install between your car antenna and the stereo. A device like this (I'm not recommending this particular device, just using it as an example):

http://www.amazon.com/Scosche-Audio-FM-Modulator-Universal/dp/B0007THIDQ

Then you can plug your MP3 player into the modulator and the signal travels straight into the radio! The setup looks something like this:

FM Modulator Setup

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Well, I'll be, this was an unexpected answer. I never knew that such a thing existed. Makes sense, old TV peripherals used RF modulators. – Bob Roberts Mar 8 '11 at 15:15
Some of the fancier ones actually provide USB connections and otherwise for stuff like steering wheel controls for an iPod. These simple ones are pretty cheap; much easier than dropping bank on a whole new stereo. – Cory Larson Mar 8 '11 at 15:26
I use one of these. A cheap one. Beware, they are rather susceptible to interference. I'd make sure you get one with enough power to drown out external radio sources on the frequncy you are using. – ravloony Mar 8 '11 at 17:58
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I had an old pioneer super tuner 3 and I thought about doing the same thing you were talking about in the original post, so that's what I did. I popped the case open, tracked down the connectors for the head to the pcb, and it was pretty much a no-brainer as to which wires to use. You have ground, then you have power for the right and power for the left, so I soldered leads onto the pins that I thought were right and soldered the other end to a headphone jack and voila. The only problem that needs worked out is that I rigged the mechanism to think there was a tape in there and it's stuck on fast forward, but the audio still comes through. The bass is a bit nasty. I'm not sure if it's picking up noise from the motor spinning.

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