What can I do to keep using an external speaker and volume control with my 12" analog TVs? My knowledge of electronics is modest.
For 35 years, I've taken the tvs I have and plugged a larger speaker into it, usually a 6x9 speaker cabinet from a 60's or 70's stereo or maybe better**. If there was no jack, I'd put one in. I'd put a pot in the circuit to adjust the volume. Mostly this was in the bedroom, and also in the bathroom so I could watch tv from the bathtub, and also in the basement. (**In 2 consecutive bathrooms, for 35 years, I've been using a woofer, tweeter, and crossover from a 1930's record player, mounted on a new piece of chipboard, covered in decorative burlap and mounted in the corner between the ceiling and the wall of the bathroom, with 45^ moldings I cut and stained.)
10 or 20 years ago, I ran out of tvs that used tubes and had to do this with transistor tvs. It seemed not to work as well. I would have to keep the volume closer to the top to avoid distortion. I only used two wires, with the variable resistor in the circuit.Are my suspicions correct, a) that it didn't work as well because they were transistor tv's and not tube tvs? b) that if I used 3 wires, 2 wires from the tv to the pot and 2 wires from the pot to the speaker, and used it as a voltage divider, I would have a fixed load on the audio output so I would get less distortion, but I would also have a lower maximum volume?
I've done this with 6 or 7 transistor tvs total, but the last two tvs have failed with audio problems, distortion, although only after several years use for each. The last one is a Sony 9" transistor tv, about 20 or 30 years old. It had two earphone jacks, one that disconnected the internal speaker and one that ran sound to the earphone and the speaker both. I used the first jack, and because the volume wasn't high enough, I bypassed the resistor in the jack circuit which is meant to lower the volume for an earphone. Did doing this ruin the audio output? -- The other tv that failed was 9" -- I forget the brand -- and had two jacks, one for an earphone but come to think of it, the second was for an external speaker, so maybe the sound distortion failure there was coincidental? Or maybe even though there was a jack, it wasn't fully capable of powering the speaker over the course of years, an hour or two a day?
Now I have another Sony, this time 12 inches, also 20 or 30 years old, with no jack afaict and I want to put one in, but I'd like to avoid damaging the audio (even if it takes years to do it.)
Or I have a much newer tv with remote, but I would like to put a jack in that and use the knob that is in the little box next to me in bed to adjust the volume. It works much faster, easier, and with more precision than remotes do. Now that I'm using a mechanical volume control, I hate to go back to the remote.
So the problem/question is the same.
The other thing complicating this is that I've had a little tinnitus in one ear since I was 10 or 20, I think, but since I'm 63 six months ago, it has gotten louder. I can't tell if it is my ear causing the problem or the tv, until the tv problem gets pretty bad. (I have an appointment with the ear doctor, but not for 3 weeks.)
Sorry for the long post. Thanks for any health you can give.