Thanks NG and 4pyros,
I am not exactly a beginner but I am new to how to make this work. I am digital dumb. But analog I have worked with making my own guitar stompboxes, compressor, mixer, powered splitter, tremolo, and a bipolar 9VDC power supply. Most of what I have made is cookie cutter but I have made some of my own mods, my own PCBs and my own PCB design, and I have an HO train layout.
First of all... can't believe how many audio products do not come factory with this very much need feature. OK that's my rave.
Both solutions above have the same message that is clear to me; speaker output signal is to much for line out. But this makes start to think of a bunch of other things now.
Using the volume pot; I am not familiar with the components concerning right/left speaker control and the Crosley unit does not have a pot that controls the right left speaker outputs. The balance must be factory set. Perhaps there are trim pots for R/L on the PCB. Or maybe I could figure this out after I open the case.
I do like the idea working with a signal voltage that is lower to start with since the tech advise provided above is advising to use a low signal strength.
However, I am old, crabby, and very picky about my sound quality. (when I was 30 I swore I would never be like this....oh well).
I want the speakers off when using a new line out connection so I will have to cut the speaker leads no matter what. As long as I am cutting them anyway I might as well use the speaker leads for my line out connection.
I can tell by the speaker terminals which leads are positive and negative. Q) I assume negative is common ground and thus it should also share ground with my power amp....right? (i.e. the ground is not isolated?)
Q) So wouldn't I need two resistors; one from the right positive speaker lead and another from the left positive speaker lead? How can I get the same resistance on R/L using resistors at +/- 10% or 5%? I guess I could cherry pick about 20 with an ohm meter and try to get as close as possible.
Q) What type of resistors can I use? Can I use a 10K trim pot and then have some control over the signal strength from each channel? Or is the carbon resistor going to cause noise problems?
Q) If it is OK to use trim pots to reduce the speaker signal, is there an output signal strength that I should try to set up that is a good overall strength? Could I measure this at the existing volume pot?
I know I have a lot of questions.......not sure about what I am doing on line out stuff. If I can learn how to do this I will no doubt put line out jacks on everything I have that is missing this major feature.