llatan

I opened up my Nakamichi head unit from a 95 LS400 with the intention of putting in an AUX input. Why am I doing this? First, the deck is a spare so I am willing to experiment. Second, I am cheap, and third, most aftermarket decks look terrible.

Here is the main board:


The interesting bits on the bottom left of the board: here's a closup


LcH and RcH! I don't know what these sort of connectors are called but their purpose seems pretty clear.

Here's another pic of more of these connectors:

They are located in the middle of the board and from left side are:
AGC Mute (TP105)
ACC5v (TP109)
AM (TP102)
OFFSET (TP1040
FM (TP101)
And between the silver FM/AM riser boards is one by itself: ML (tp103)

So the question before I start mucking about is: where should the ground from the AUX in go? Obviously left and right are clear - but should the ground signal go to the FM connection? Or put it to the PCB ground somewhere?

Kansas

Not that this will help but when I recently had a guy in California add an aux-in to my 00 LS Nak, he applied stickers to the head unit that would be torn if the head unit was opened up. The stickers said that the aux-in warranty is voided if the head unit is opened. I tended to wonder if the main reason for the sealing stickers was to discourage people from opening the head units to see how he did it. Maybe adding the aux-in was easy but it sure is cool with its on/off switch on the face of the unit. I'm loving how well it works.

Here is the thread about it: https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls4...000-ls400.html.

PseudoK

what was the outcome for this? how did you do it?

car469999

I thought I would post up what I have found on this topic since I could not find much on adding an auxiliary input to the Nakamichi.

Radio pictured is from a 1997, the 1998 that I have is almost identical so I assume it will work on it also.

This is a work in progress, more to follow as I experiment more.

1. Remove the top by prying on either of the rear corners.
2. Remove the left side cover (5 screws).
3. Disconnect both ends of the ribbon cable, and remove it. This unhooks the tape deck audio from the top board.

Now that the tape audio is removed from the top board, you can use TP107 and TP108 to connect the positive wires from a 3.5mm headphone (or solder to pins I labeled 1 and 5 on the top board). The ground will need to be soldered to pins 2 and 4.


In order for tape to be selected on the radio, a tape must be inserted (I assume your tape deck needs to be atleast partially functional to the point where it "sees" the tape and will start playing the tape).

Upper board ribbon connector, solder points on bottom of board.

Pin 1 → TP108 → Right +

Pin 2 → Right ground -

Pin 3 → NC

Pin 4 → TP107 → Left +

My future plans for this: locate a spot to splice into the FM audio or CD audio or disable the tape deck to the point where the tape hack works without a cassette tape (I prefer to not have the tape mechanism spinning all the time I want AUX). Install a switch that will allow me to switch between 3.5mm input and bluetooth.

End goal is to swap a Nakamichi into my car that is currently a Pioneer car. Use the Nakamichi to feed after market amplifiers and speakers.