pitch-shift cassette

Ken Williams · From: Arkansas

Do any of you have a reasonably new cassette deck with pitch control and have it sharing an input(y-jacked) with some other type of device? If so, what brand or model is it? I got a new cassette for my birthday last year but when I tried to y-jack the deck and my board into the same aux input of my stereo amp, it would not work. Only one unit would work at a time. In other words, when I would try to play through the board the cassette deck would not work. Turn the board off and it worked fine. I had to take it back. It never hurts to make a few hints with Christmas coming up. But, I don't want to go through what I did last year.
Any help would be appreciated.

Ken

[This message was edited by Ken Williams on 30 September 2001 at 09:53 PM.]

Blake Hawkins · From: Florida

Ken, The use of a "Y" connector is not a reccomended technique. Sometimes it will work but most times it will not.
If there is a great difference in impedence level between your board and cassette deck, one will effectively "short" out the signal from the other.

In this case, I'm not sure what you mean by "board" but if it is an audio mixer,
then the solution is to feed the output of the cassette deck into one input, the output of the guitar into another and the output of the audio mixer into your power amp or another tape recorder.

If you don't have an audio mixer, then that's probably what you need.
Radio Shack has some low priced ones,
try one of those.
Blake

Ken Williams · From: Arkansas

Thanks Blake for the reply and suggestion. By board, I mean a stereo mixer. I have a multi-track recorder going through it at times. I mix down to cassette. I've been y-jacking equipment together for years and never had a problem. I guess maybe I've been lucky. I have 2 cassette decks that work fine using this configuration but they do not have a pitch control on them. But if a new cassette is in the works, I may not have any choice but to go through the board or a spare guitar amp.

Ken

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

Anytime you parallel two devices into the same input ("Y jack") you have a potential for various problems, including signal loss (levels), frequency response loss, equipment damage, etc.

If you are going to run more than one device into a single input you need to isolate each unit. Blake's suggestion of an inexpensive mixer is a good option.

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