How to connect audio input to a breadboard

Mount the breadboard on a chunk of plywood, or acrylic, and screw down an aluminum angle beside it. Dril/punch/file any necessary apertures/slots into the aluminum, and mount the sockets in that (even if it takes hotmelt glue).

Then you can make a few soldered connections to the jack with flexible leads, and a 0.025" square (wirewrap size) pin on the other end. If you have a good set of taps (including metric), an inline 2.5mm socket can be threaded into the aluminum instead of into the plastic grip..

That 'chassis' sheet metal is sturdy enough to survive accidental force on the attached wires. It's not unusual to require strain relief for external pigtail wires, in the range of 20 lbs pull, and... you can do it.

Strip the wire, solder onto bus wire, plug into bread board. I'll sometimes use a big R (1 meg) or little C (1 pF) instead of the bus wire. (keeps things in place a bit more.)

George H.

In subsequent searching, I found this jack at Digikey:

The datasheet suggests this should work. All the pins are on 2.5mm centers, which is awfully close to 2.54.

The breadboard is going to be the permanent home of this project, and I need a jack on the board that a cable can plug into. I think the Digikey may work.