fall inside a hole

Realistic 12-1802A car 8 track player

First written December 1, 2024

The Realistic 12-1802 was a compact under-the-dash eight-track cartridge player sold by Radio Shack from 1976 to 1980. It was advertised as small enough to mount in VWs and compact cars under the dash, seat, or even inside a glove box. It is a relatively standard eight track player with integrated amplifier for use in a car and was superseded by the 12-1801, a slightly larger (1.875" x 4.625" x 6.75" versus 2.5" x 4.75" x 5.25") but cheaper player introduced in 1979 and sold into the mid 1980s.

I got this player at some point around 2019 and decided in 2024 to install it in my current car. I previously had installed a larger eight track player (and later a combination 4/8 track player) in my previous car, but I was looking for something smaller that could fit inside the opening storage compartment in the center console - and hook up through the existing cigarette lighter accessory socket and auxiliary input jack tucked away inside, which have otherwise gone unused. Because this player has an amplified output I figured I would probably have to tap off the input to the amplifier chips to get a proper line-level input for my car to accept, but I wanted to make sure the player was working it all first... they're pretty simple and often work fine as long as the belt is still good, but you never know

I think I had this player apart once when I had just gotten it, but I wanted to take a look inside and photograph parts of it for this webpage as well as touch up some of the silver detailing on the player. The front control sliders pull off (and as a result are often lost) and then six screws, two on each side and one each on the top and bottom, hold the two parts of the metal casing as well as the plastic front face on.

Inside is a fairly standard compact eight-track player mechanism with flywheel and rubber belt drive located over the cartridge, with the circuit boards fitting around the mechanism.

The track change selector is nice and chunky and is not so much an off-the-shelf button as it is some metal wired and formed together. The bottom of the casing included the schematic diagram for the player - handy! I sprayed the hard-to-move and undoubtedly scratchy slide potentiometers for balance, tone, and volume while they were exposed and worked them side to side until they could slide more freely. I also un-bent the volume slider.

I touched up the parts of the plastic face that were originally silver and put it back together for the day. The rear of the unit has a negative ground connection that I think might also be possible using the large protruding lug and a round five-pin style connector that was somewhat common on auto tape players in the 1970s (although not always wired the same way). I hooked it up to power through the car adapter I planned on using and it output just fine. I still needed, however, to tap into the audio before it hit the main output amplifier.