[Frameworks] Hooking Kodak Pageant up to RCA theater system

[David Tetzlaff]

There are three issues here:

1. Alain asks which model since the speaker jack on newer Pageants is a standard 1/4 inch 'phone-plug' type, which you can get at any electronics store, but the older ones use a similar but thinner plug that will be guite hard to find.

2. Connecting a speaker output to an RCA line in will result in an impedance mismatch, which may distort the signal. (It also may not, if you're lucky, and you keep the volume on the pageant quite low.) Ideally you should have an attenuator circuit in-between.

3. Most importantly, a Pageant connected directly to a theater audio system is likely to introduce ground-loop hum like crazy. You will almost certainly need an isolation transformer.

If you need this like now, here's what you should do: If not at Radio Shack, then at stores that sell car audio gear you should be able to get a stereo RCA isolation cable (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/25mway). 

If you have a newer Pageant with the 1/4" jack, get an RCA-F to 1/4"-M adapter at Radio Shack or wherever (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/mzgjre), and give that a try using one side of the stereo isolation cable. Better would be to hack the ends off one side of the iso cable and wire both channels to a mono 1/4" plug (RS 274-254 is solderless: http://tinyurl.com/7jxnjd7).

If you have an older Pagaent with the oddball plug, the easiest method is to cut the speaker cable about a foot from the plug, and solder an inline plug and jack (either RCA or 1/4") to the two side to reconnect them, which would also create an access point for your iso cable. You might be able to find a solderless (screw terminal) inline 1/4" jack at a 'real' electronics store that carries Switchcraft parts (or possibly a music store such as Guitar Center), but Radio Shack only has solder type. If you do have a Guitar Center type store nearby, you might try them first for any plugs and jacks as the quality should be better than Radio Shack. i doubt they have the iso cables though, which are generally classified as 'car audio.'

----
Alternatively, BestBuy carries an iso tranformer without attached cables, but with RCA jacks for in and out.
http://tinyurl.com/7tp2tyr. You could use a standard RCA cable to get from this thing to the the theater audio, and a stock 1/4" to RCA mono cable to get to the newer Pagaent (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/7crdrhh)

---
There are premade cables with attenuators built in, but they may drop the level too much, and they don't have the right plugs on the ends anyway, and if you hook them up with adapters, you get a kludge that's likely to cut in-and-out or get interference, so I wouldn't worry about the attenuator unless you discover it's absolutely necessary. If so, you if can solder, you can make one yourself. It's just a few resistors, quite cheap. Write me and I'll send you a schematic.