Okay, my landlady has two vintage stereos. One is with a Pioneer SX636 receiver and the other is some old Technics integrated amp... She wanted to have the two talk to each other, i.e. feed the output from system one into system two & visa versa... Now in the olden days, most o these pieces, you could simply feed output from the tape 2 out into lets say CD or Aux in on the other piece & voila' be listening to whatever was playing one the one system. I tried this... and get zero! I tried on both systems to no avail!

What workaround is there if any?

Help! and thanks in advance... It's always the freebies and brother in-law jobs that have little problems like this!

Is there a selector on one that say's tape 2 on/off? or something like that?

On the Pioneer, use the "Tape Mon 1 out" output, and leave "Tape Mon 1" switch in the on position.

Take it to the "aux" input (or any line level input) and then leave that Technics alone.
Tell her NOT to use the tape monitor switches on that unit at all.

[Link: classicaudio.com]

No, and that's what threw me for a loop! Usually at least it used to be, that Tape 2 out al;ways was like a live feed / fixed audio output...

Use the Rec Out from Tape 1. I don't remember Rec Out for Tape 2 doing much, other than allowing transfer from Tape 1 to Tape 2. That Pioneer is from before bi-directional recording was common. It should work fine. Use your iPod, iPhone, Android or whatever with a Y cord to test the inputs- it's possible that the switches are dirty and need cleaning, or some other problem exists. If you have a small amplified speaker, use that to verify output from the Rec Out. If you get it to work and it hums, get a ground loop isolator- it'll be too expensive to repair the electrical wiring. Or, you can use an A/V balun that's a true balun, so the in and out are isolated.

I have Zone 2 out on my Denon receiver connected to the Aux In on my old Sony STR-5800 receiver and it's great- you should be able to get this to work, but again, use Rec Out from Tape 1.

edit, already covered.

Reminds me of the dreaded phone call from the customer that their receiver just stopped working and they pushed every button on the front to get it to work. See the button that labeled "Tape Monitor" and a very loud blast of sound would come over the phone before you had a chance to tell them to turn the sound down before they pushed it.

Thanks 2nd! and everybody else. I used to love the "push the Tape 2 button" phone calls! LOL

mcn779 described my major function for a few years at Rogersound Labs, in addition to designing and building store demo equipment from scratch and building new stores.

It was always simply checking to see if TAPE was pushed in. AFTER telling them to turn the volume down. It's my impression that Tape 2 was not the one to use, but I don't remember why.

This thread has been groovy!

I remember those "my stereo is not working" calls from HiFi Buys and my Sound Advice days in the 80's...

Good memories...Funny stuff. One of the first things I learned when troubleshooting over the phone was to say "Make sure the receiver is turned down" before you started anything.

If tape 2 was not being used we used to take the tape 2 out and loop it back into tape 2 in so it would not matter if they pushed the tape 2 button.

While I was at a retail store in the eighties a customer was told by another salesman on the phone to check the tape monitor button BEFORE he was told anything about lowering the voume. After a loud sound was heard on our end of the line, the customer came back and said the stereo was now working but his little dog had a heart attack and died!

By the way, for several years this problem did not exist, then it came back as


The silliest thing was that the multi-channel input selection was put in as a toggle, not as a selection that was cancelled by making any other selection.


(is "multi-channel" the right name for this? I forget....)