Tascam PE-40 Input conversion

[smalldiaphragms]

I picked up a fantastic working and CLEAN Tascam PE-40 eq from ebay last week. I knew going into this that the I/O are RCA jacks. What I'd like to do is change these out for some 1/4" jacks so I can interface it with the rest of my gear like I normally would anything else. I'm not super savvy in the real details of electronic engineering so bear with me if I ask an obvious question. I have built a hairball 1176 Rev. A and a few other smaller projects to test and calibrate the 1176...so my experience has only come so far.

Before the eq was delivered, I downloaded and read the user manual(for the most part). It points out that the inputs are unbalanced. I can handle pulling out the I/O pcb, and replacing all the wiring with 1/4" jacks just fine. What I need to know is, do I need to add anything to the signal path on the way in to make it accept balanced signals and/or not do anything funky?

Cheers.

 

[ln76d]

It's all not so simple. Balanced and unbalanced signals are different as you probably know. You can put on input and output transformers or equivalent electronic circuit, which shematics you can probably will find on web. There's a few commercial converters too.
The best, what i think, you can do - if you really need jacks, change for unbalanced and enjoy this eq!
If you will don't run with long cables and your interface/soundcard can operate with unbalanced signals it will work fine - ofcourse if the eq is itself fine
I'm using from time to time an old tascam mixing desk. There's almost all (except microphone inputs) on unbalanced rca. It works really fine.
You can try to use symetrical cables with "mono" jacks. Hot wire to the Tip of the jack, cold to the Sleeve and shield to the Sleeve but only on one end of the cable. On the second side of the cable cut the shield. Side of the cable with soldered shield should be connected from the output side of the gear. Sometimes works really good.