My in-laws gave my wife her old Fisher Price Record Player (manufactured in 1982) along with a handful of children’s Disney and Sesame Street LP’s that have not been re-released on CD or digitally via iTunes.
We were quite surprised when we plugged it in a worked. There was just one thing I could not get past, that being the audio quality coming from the mono speaker. The poor audio and my wish to attempt to convert these to CDs and MP3s left me with two options….
- Go buy a record player with a USB interface.
- Add an audio line out for under $3.
I like to tinker so I chose option #2.
I’ve added line out audio jacks to clock radios in the past and knew it was a simple task. That is once I acquired the necessary component. I needed a 1/8″ Stereo Panel-Mount audio jack Model: 274-246 ($2.49 plus tax) the only problem was locating this part in the store. Radio Shack has nice pull out cabinets full of these small parts but, they are not kept in order.
My only real challenge was opening up the Fisher Price Record Player… I never would have thought Fisher Price would have used security screws back in the early 80’s.
I ended up drilling into the center to get rid of the peak. This allowed me with some patience to remove the screws with a small screwdriver.
I ended up replacing all of the screws with traditional Phillips screws for simplicity if I ever need to disassemble the turntable.
I looked around the best location to mount the jack. At first I was going to hide it underneath in a cavity used to store the power cord. I wanted to keep it from looking modified, but I decided that this was a fairly simple add-on to an early 80’s toy that this just might look like it was original. I found a place on side that did not interfere with the internal workings of the player and drilled a hole just big enough to fit the jack. On the exterior I did a slight counter bore to allow for exterior retaining ring to be screwed on.
The soldering was quite simple. I created a mono to stereo conversion from the mono out of the circuit board to the stereo audio jack. I just had to disconnect one of the blue wires from the board and attach it to the audio jack. Then, connect the other 2 ends to the circuit board.
The end result turned out just as expected. I hooked it up (line out to line in) to a stereo and played a record and it sounds just fine. My next step is to use Audacity and convert an LP to a CD. This will determine if I need to purchase one of those USB record players to convert LPs to CD.
Most likely, I will not be trilled with the digital conversions. However, at the very least I now have a record player that I can connect to a stereo system or simply external computer speakers.
Leave a Reply