Help with vintage tape delay audio through midi connectors

Hi! I have a tape delay from the seventies and for the input and output it 4 pin midi looking connectors. They are kind of flaky so i was hoping to replace them but how do i know what connects to what? i was hoping to put in trs ideally. Any advice? thanks. i've never seen midi type connectors used to carry audio before in my life.

sebastianzetin said:

Hi! I have a tape delay from the seventies and for the input and output it 4 pin midi looking connectors. They are kind of flaky so i was hoping to replace them but how do i know what connects to what? i was hoping to put in trs ideally. Any advice? thanks. i've never seen midi type connectors used to carry audio before in my life.

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In Germany those connectors are called DIN and they were used extensively for german HIFI products from probably the 60s into the 80s. So it was an old HIFI connector which was used for MIDI, not he other way around ;-)
There were several versions, the 5-pin type was most typical, 3 pins were used in tape machines for mono connections or mics for example. I am not sure  that I've ever seen a 4-pin version, this seems unusual to me. Are you sure that it has 4 pins?
If you want to be sure about the pinout you might need the manual or schematic of your device, there was no definite standard. You should easily be able to find typical pinouts for the 5-pin version on the net. You can also just check things out by trial and error.

Michael

For inputs, usually pin 1 was low-level, for microphone inputs etc.
Pin 3 was high level, 'line' input.
Pin 2 (the center pin) was always ground.

For stereo connectors, pin 1 was left and pin 4 was right (low level input), and pin 3 (left) and pin 5 (right) were the high level inputs.
In case of a balanced situation pin 1+3 were audio, pin 2 ground
And for stereo balanced inputs, the right channel was pin 4 and 5 audio, pin 2 ground.

Unbalanced output was usually on pin 3 (signal) and pin 2 (ground).
With stereo outputs, pin 3 was left output and pin 5 right output.

sebastianzetin said:

Hi! I have a tape delay from the seventies and for the input and output it 4 pin midi looking connectors. They are kind of flaky so i was hoping to replace them but how do i know what connects to what? i was hoping to put in trs ideally. Any advice? thanks. i've never seen midi type connectors used to carry audio before in my life.

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thanks for answers. i will check how many pins it has. but thanks for even replying. sorry it took so long to respond, i've been setting up a new studio (my dream of the last 20 years)

Yes those are DIN connectors.

Tell us the brand and model of your unit

With the schematic it will be much easier to know what is on each pin and find how to implement that on TS or TRS jacks.

It's not a difficult mod, but it's an useful one

There was a 4-pin DIN and it was used by Quad for inter-amp connections. I don't think you'll see it anywhere else. It can be recognised by the fact it doesn't have a "centre" pin at 12 o'clock like a 3 or 5-pin DIN plug has

What you have almost certainly uses the standard DIN pinout

Nick Froome

well everything is easier with the brand and model of the unit, there's countless vintage tape delay units