On Mar 4, 10:29*pm, mm wrote:
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.

Run the television earphone output to an amp. It doesn't have to be
anything special. You could build a small one fairly easily. I'm
guessing, due to the increased strength in modern magnets, that newer
television speakers need less power to produce the same volume as
older speakers. So the audio amplifiers in the television are going
to have problems pushing those old current eaters. If you are driving
the external speakers directly, it would probably be a good idea to
match the impedances. A small audio transformer would do the trick for
cheap. You could integrate that into a small amp, with a gain and
volume pot, and even a balance and fade if you wanted to get fancy for
under 20 or 30 bucks. There are schematics all over the internet for
those sorts of things.