Great. While it works.
This worked great for about a month and then started to have problems auto-reversing during play. There is something wrong with the friction wheel in the device that fails after a few dozen hours of work. The sound quality when it was working was great. I wanted this to work, since the FM transmitter products I have used have not met my expectations and cost a lot more.
I bought two of these items and the other one has lasted a little longer but it is starting to show the same signs. One suggestion is flipping the cassette part over if you can use it that way in your player. This seems to work for a short drive, but you end up flipping the cassette over and over on long drives and the wires usually get in the way when you're not inserting it in what would seem like the primary direction for your player.
2009-11-09
Decided to tinker, now buying another
I carefully read all the reviews before buying this product. I liked that people had taken it apart to make it work better in their stereos (and that it was CHEAP!). So I did try it out first in my car stereo (Subaru 02 factory), and it worked pretty good, actually it worked great. The only drawback was that I could hear the cogs spinning, epecially on really quiet songs. I thought to myself, "I can fix that." So I proceeded to take it apart.
Hint #1: Most of the screws holding the cassette together are on one side, but don't miss the two on the other side. Because I did. I believe it was the ultimate reason for my failure. What happened was that I wasn't able to get the sides completely seperated (surprise!), which foiled my plan of seeing where everything belonged before I began dissassembling. Several things fell out immediately, including two springs. I decided to just go for it and take out ALL the gears, THAT would take care of that gear noise. Which leads me to:
Hint #2: The gears in the middle (that would turn the tape if there were tape in the cassette) are there for a reason. When I put the gearless cassette in my stereo, there was nothing for the stereo to engage so it just spit it right back out. Fortunately for me, it was at this point that I discovered the two screws I had overlooked, so putting things back together was a lot easier. I put all the gears back in (this part was relatively easy, even though I hadn't exactly seen where they had all come from). I decided to leave out the gear that was the offensive gear in the auto-reverse posts.
Hint #3: The auto-reverse gear that people are referring to is (I think) the one gear that you have to unscrew a screw to remove. I am not 100% sure on this as I wasn't really having that problem in the first place and wasn't ever able to get the damn thing to work again, but if for some reason I decided to go through this mess again that's what I would start with.
As I'm sure you have gathered, my cassette is still non-functional. I finally put everything back in, with the exception of those two springs, and I really think I got all the parts back in the right spots. But it did work, at least until I messed with it, and after looking at the Phillips, I have decided that the rock-bottom price makes the gear noise liveable. So hopefully I can keep my hands off the next one. Oh, and if anyone can tell me where those two springs go, I would really appreciate it.
2009-10-31
