How do I wire stereo headphones on a stereo tv?

[hike1]

I have a 'closed-circuit' jack from Radio shack, a little
tab of metal touches another when the jack goes in. There
are also 3 tiny tabs with holes in them. The tv has 2 pairs
of wires for the tv speakers. I thought stereo needed 3,
but maybe the 'common' is hidden somewhere. Anyway, I'd
be happy with mono headphones (yes, I know I'd have to make
those too) as long as the tv speakers went off when the
headphone jack went in. I already have all speakers/headphones making noise.

Thanks in advance..

hike1@cybertrails.com

[dutch diy]

Hike1

some tips:

Stereo needs two speakers and two wires to each speaker.
Some amplifiers use 'ground' as one point for the speaker so
you can combine ground-left and ground-right and end up with three wires: ground , signal-left and signal-right. Most likely this is the case in your tv also, but I'm not sure.

The three tabs on the connector are intended for soldering the three wires.

I presume the jack looks like this:

/\
|| < signal
==
|| < signal
==
||
|| < ground / common
||
====
| |
| |


I'm not sure if the connector is right. You should have one where a connection is 'broken' when the jack is inserted.






[Edited by dutch diy on 09-09-2001 at 03:58 PM]

[PassFan]

I think a headphone amplifier operates at a different impedance than a regular speaker( seems i remember something about 600 ohm for headphones). If im right you'll either burn up your headphones or the sound will have to be turned up real loud which may overload the amp driving your speakers. Im not sure which, but be careful as there are extremely high voltages present in the back of a tv even when the cord is unplugged ( people have been killed). Good luck.