What is the best idea for a broken Karaoke Machine?

[reverend Boltron]

Hi, this is my first time posting on this forum, but you guys seem to know your stuff from what I've read. So I was wondering, what would you do to a karaoke machine? I bought one at a thrift store for 5 bucks. It didnt come with a power cable, and one of the tape players is broken. The actual machine is still in my car, but i'm guessing that this machine is a very very early one, or a very very cheap one. Since it has no LCD or anything, and it has pots to control the band frequencies. It has two mic inputs, and two slots to put tapes in. If i am not mistaken, I do believe that it has two outputs as well. Though I could be wrong on that. I will get the full specs of it when the weather calms down out here. There's no natural disaster, but its pretty rainy.

One of my ideas was to turn it into a nice guitar amp. But that seemed pretty common. So i was thinking, maybe turn it into a like "camoflauged" computer? I figure that you guys have been around a while, and you might have seen or made interesting things, or even like, had them pop in your head but never had the time or opportunity to make them. If you guys would just turn it into an amp, do you think you could point me to some high quality schematics or tutorials? Thank you very much

- Tim

p.s. the door is open to anything _all_ suggestions welcome! thanks

 

[stevez]

While it might seem that there is plenty of useful hardware in the item you purchased you might struggle for an awful long time trying to find a use for some or all of the items. While consumer items are made up of transistors, transformers, ICs, LEDs, resistors, capacitors, etc, etc, the specific components may or may not be common to something you'd want to construct. You are probably correct in assuming that it has an audio amplifier or two that might be useful in something else. The problem - does the amp actually work or could that be why you found it in the thrift store. That might take some time to figure out and then more time finding ways to modify it to suit your needs.

What I do with stuff like this - strip out the things that I might find generally useful - power cords, switches and common items like that. Next I try to extract large capacitors - and power transformers being sure that I identify the primary and secondary leads before clipping the wires. The smaller components - if I can see what they are AND I know I can remove them in the future I might toss the board in a pile with similar boards. Maybe I'll pirate a component or two at some point. When the pile gets large I simply start tossing stuff. As with all "used" electronics you might want to be sure you can eventually test what you are re-using so that you don't waste a lot of time when you build something - wondering if the components are good or if you made a wiring or design mistake. It's one thing if you are a seasoned pro and can recognize likely mistakes. In my own case, I don't need to add confusion so I try to start with new (though maybe low cost) stuff.

If it's an amp that you want you might find enough stuff for a DC power supply in your machine that you can salvage. Then think thru the construction of an audio amp - if that's what you need. There are a number of audio amp ICs that are fairly simple to use and their data sheets contain schematics - or you can find them here. That way you start with some known good design, you know more about inputs and outputs, etc. In my opinion this greatly increases your chances of success.

 

[reverend Boltron]

Thanks for your input. That is what I was assuming. I was going to gut the thing anyway, and just use the speaker and jacks for anything worthwhile. Though, I think I will just gut the whole thing and build a decent easily modified amp. That way I can just have a basis for other times when I'm bored. Much appreciation.

Tim

 

[Someone Electro]

There isnt much to ask about joust see what works and take it a part.I once made an amp yout of an old radio.I also got an big transformer that puts out 15V 10A and a nice fefinder bridge(wich made an nice bulky power source) to along whith an stereo UV LED bar,eqvalizer whith volume control,an motor,big power switch,2 0.5 W and 2 20W spekers (can be cuite loud in an small room) and an 70cm telecopic antena.

all i did to the main circuit was conect some wires to it so you can conect it to the headphones conector on an coputer or radio.

Then i thurnd the basses and the volume on the eqvalizer to the max.The speker started juping for 1 mm on the table