Customer Reviews

Coby CA-747 Dual Position CD/MD/MP3 Cassette Adapter

5 star:		(197)
4 star:		(83)
3 star:		(51)
2 star:		(36)
1 star:		(101)

 

 

I bought this product and found like many other people out there that if you have a tape deck with an auto-reverse feature, that you'll have some problems with just about any cassette adapter. After looking online, I found out how to fix most brands, but not this one. So after tooling around for about half an hour, I figured out how to get this cassette adapter to work in an auto-reverse tape deck. If you open the adapter and look inside, you'll see a small gear between one of the center teeth wheels and the little assembly that contains the guide wheel near the edge of the adapter that can only rotate in one direction. Remove this small gear. This will allow the tape to spin freely in either direction. If you look at the guide wheel, you'll notice that it can shift to two positions. One that protrudes closer to the outside of the adapter and one that has it sit more inside the adapter. Tape this piece so that it stays permanently in one of these two positions. That guide wheel moving is how the auto-reverse in your tape deck knows to activate. After I made these changes, I found that the adapter worked in my Ford tape deck flawlessly. No need for an FM transmitter, after all! Hope this helps those of you with the same problem!

This is an excellent product. I have been using it to connect my portable MP3 player to my car audio system. I have been using it daily for over a month and it work EXACTLY as it should. The sound is truely excellent and indistinguishable in quality from my car radio or CD player. The construction quality also seems to be excellent.

One thing I especially like is the coiled cord. I had used a similar product some years ago and the long connecting cord was always an inconvenience - it would hang down and get in the way during use. When you wanted to store the item in the glove box, it would just add to the clutter. With this product the cord stays neatly coiled and out of the way - it does not clutter the dashboard or floor area and is easy to store.

One thing to keep in mind when using any product like this - some (but not all) car tape players have a "skip" mode. When a tape player's "skip" mode is active, it listens for silent portions of the tape. If it is detects any silence for more than a few seconds, it will automatically go into fast forward until it "hears" sound again. If your tape player has a "skip" mode, be sure to cancel this mode - i.e., put the player in "normal" play mode. Otherwise, you will find the tape player trying to "fast forward" over any silent portions of your audio feed.

I would highly recommend this product.

I just received my unit and was aware of the possible problem with auto reverse when I bought it. But being unhappy with the quality of FM transmitters, I thought the price was worth the risk. When I plugged the Coby into my car cassette it did a couple of auto reverses and then spit the Coby out. Having read the review from 3/07 about taking the unit apart and removing the center gear, I got out my small Philips and had at it(2 screws on one side and a bunch on the other). Be careful because the parts inside the cassette fall out pretty easily. But removing the center gear worked and the sound is very good except for a little clatter from the cassette. I would guess highway noise will cover that up.

It works! Sound is OK, not quite as good quality as when playing tapes , but overall good... just needed to readjust the bass & treble back down to midpoint on my cassette deck from where I usually have them. I'd give 5 stars if the sound was a bit better, but also I don't expect a lot from low end equipment like I'm using here.

I bought this adapter to give it a try for playing my mp3 player in my old car; inexpensive enough to be a minimal risk. Context: is this is with 1998 Toyota Camry basic model factory wiring, oldy-but-goody Sony XR-6450 (1995) cassette deck & low-end Boston Acoustic speakers. I don't expect more for now with my basic car equipment. I'm just glad for the option on long trips to add my portable music library to my limited traveling taped music ancient cassette collection. I didn't want to completely upgrade my car stereo yet since I'm not ready to upgrade to a newer car quite yet, so this is a good temporary solution. I'm using a Cowon D2 MP3/WMA player - 16G of music, sorted into folders by music type. The Cowon D2 has wonderful sound quality on its own with decent headphones, and a forever battery life compared to others; See my review on the cowon d2 for why I've been pleased with this non-mainstream player.

I read all the reviews on cassette adapters for mobile music media, and thanks to Amazon for enabling the handy consumer comments and tips. I had an autoreverse car tape deck that allows turning on/off the blank-space skip, but not the autoreverse.

The Coby adapter didn't work without the modification described by KS "RT Again" and J. Christofferson in 2007 (thank you for helping so many people with those reviews!). Similar to the experience of others, my cassette player did seek, reverse, seek, and spit out the adapter. So I got out my tiny electronics phillips screwdriver and removed the screws from the adapter... Followed the description to tweak the mechanism to prevent the player's auto-reverse from kicking in. I did not tape anything; just removed the one small gear as they described.

I have some additional descriptive notes here to help anyone who has an automatic/non-selecta ble reverse-play cassette deck and wants to try tinkering with the unit:

6 corner screws on one side, then flip the unit over and remove the two screws over the tape head area. I think two of the corner screws in the notch where the connector can dock for side or end mount are slightly smaller than the others... Just place them somewhere stable in corresponding positions to where you took them out... Be careful opening up the unit when you are about to lift off one side... The adapter's guts are all mounted on one side (one cover of its two), so if you have it the right side up nothing will fall out when you lift off the cover on one side, gently straight up. (I forget if this was the side with the two central screws, or the side with the corner screws.) If so, you won't disturb anything and can see everything in its proper place. (look to see if things inside look like they are about to jiggle before you take the cover all the way off - if so, just flip it to the other side to prevent fall out :)

With the adapter's tape head facing towards you and the notched jack end facing away from you, the electronic pickups are on the left side. The middle of the unit has 3 wide plastic gears, the two on either side with notched hole to get drive from the player's two drive spindles (or where you stick your fingers in to rewind an old tape if it's winding got loosened). There's a clear flat flexible plastic cover over those, with a hole in the two appropriate positions, AND a small notch in the middle - you want to ensure this plastic piece is aligned centrally when you put it back together, so the unit can close without gapping due to one of the joining areas biting on the clear plastic gear cover. On the lower right is the small assembly that brings the spindle drive of the big gear to the gears of the tape drive (tape drive is the small gear with the black rubber o-ring, towards front of the unit). The assembly is mounted onto an odd-oblong-shaped flat piece which is what you see looking down (assembly's gears are underneath it). The assembly is mounted on one end with a pin-&-hole feature and on the other end with a pin-thru-slot feature. Just lift the assembly straight up. The small gear to remove is towards the center end of the assembly - it's a bilevel gear with a wider bottom gear and a narrower gear-toothed portion, molded in one piece so as to transfer drive from one set of gears to another. Just lift out this small gear, replace the assembly with its remaining two gears on it back onto the adapter unit, and after you ensure the clear plastic main gears cover is aligned perfectly, replace the black top cover of the unit. If everything is aligned properly it will close with no gaps or perhaps very tiny gaps. Reinsert the screws and you're done.

Also, ensure that you use the adapter by doing things in this order: Turn on the mp3 player first, put its volume in about middle position, then connect the adapter to it, turn on the car cassette player unit, turn its volume all the way down, and finally/lastly, put the cassette adapter into the cassette player. Then turn up car player's volume as desired, and if necessary reset bass and treble.

I just got mine, and have tried it in two different front loading car players. It sounds terrific in both. However, the second player is smart, and almost outsmarted me. :-) I found that, if the music isn't playing through the Coby when it is inserted, the player doesn't think a tape is there, and it won't enter play mode. If you turn the volume all the way up, you can hear a fuzzy version of the music anyway, which confused me for an hour or so. Once I realized the music needed to be on, and the Coby plugged into my iPod before putting it into the cassette player, it started working perfectly. Keep this in mind if you have trouble with yours...
Highly recommended!

Before I had this, I had a generic cassette adapter. The sound was horrible and it made a terrible, tinny echo. I bought it for my Ford Taurus which costs $800 to add a CD changer to. My wireless FM adapter sounded better than my generic cassette adapter, and it was static city since the antenna is on the opposite side of the car (station wagon).

I was pleasantly surprised when I got this adapter to replace my old one. The sound quality is better than the strongest FM station here, and the coiled cord really reduces the mess in my car. I only had one problem with this, and I think that is because of my car stereo, but I will note it anyway.

After 10 minutes of playing, my car stereo would switch to side 2, then side 1, and display TDE1 and eject the tape. After getting very angry, I found a solution. Simply take the adapter apart, spray WD40 on all the gears, and remove the small gear assembly that prevents the rape from being rewound (was this even necessary? there is no physical tape so it doesn't matter if someone tries to rewind it). Problem solved!

I would definitely get this over any other adapter.

When I first started using this, I loved it. It worked fine in my car cassette deck and had decent sound. In fact, I bought a second one for my wife. Then, after about two weeks, it stopped working. It would no longer play in my cassette deck, which ejected it as soon as I put it in every time. I tried contacting Coby's support on the Web, but they were unresponsive. Luckily, Amazon took it back for a refund. Note that they no longer sell these directly. Bet they had too many returns...

When this adapter first arrived, I thought it was great. The sound quality was excellent, and free of all the distortion and interference I get from using an FM transmitter-style adapter (there are few open frequencies in the SF Bay Area). The first day, I used it for about 20 minutes total (didn't have far to drive), and it worked great. The second day I had a bit farther to drive. After about 30 minutes, it quit. Hasn't worked again since.

I didn't expect it to last forever, but less than an hour?

Yes, it has a 1 year warranty: just send the unit back with a money order ($6) to cover the return postage. Of course, then you're spending more in postage than you originally spent for the unit...

I bought this adapter for my car, it works flawlessly!! However, there is this a warning that says not to leave the adapter in the cassette player while the car is off...I did it just once overnight and it was ruined, luckily, these can be picked up economically. I highly recommend this adapter...and I highly recommend not leaving in the cassette player.

Clean the heads of the cassette deck per the usual schedule. My Coby CA-747 works exactly as it should as long as I keep the heads clean.

Great value for the price, particularly if you just want to hear your portable over the car speakers and you're not looking for the highest fidelity. And still sounds infinitely better than the wireless FM transmitter I replaced.