Cheap Belkin TuneCast FM transmitter ( F8V367-DL ) (Electronics) Price

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Customer Reviews of Belkin TuneCast FM transmitter ( F8V367-DL )

needs some work done on it by the consumer...
I bought this, and i didnt like the idea of having to pay $10 more for the tunecast 2 at walmart. So i bought the TC 1. This thing sucks out of the box! It is in desperate need of an antenna for starters... Well, i used it for about a month, then, it just started going downhill-sound got crappier, kept eating batteries...just a pain... <
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>So a few weeks later...me, being the adventurous person i am, took the product apart to see the 'goods'inside. Upon getting inside, i spied an 'Inductance coil' smothered in wax. As any electronics hobbyist will tell you, DO NOT touch these as if you accidentally move one of the wraps of the coil, the frequency changes. Wellllllllll, i just had to! So i did, and guess what-The whole coil fell off into my hand! I was sitting there thinkin "jeeze, im really screwed now!' So that was late at night. The next morning, i was digging thru my closet and found an old nonworking car cdplayer that my friend gave me about a year back. Just for kicks, i took it apart, and what was the most glorious thing i saw inside?? AN INDUCTANCE COIL! I immediately grabbed my soldering iron and de-soldered the 3 coils off the board. I then, brought them over, and soldered them onto the back of the mainboard of my tunecast. (i had to put them on the nubs of the old solder on the back of the board because i couldnt get in the small space with the soldering iron, if i would have put it on the front with all the other components) Well, i had it all soldered on, turned on, and hooked up to my cd player, i turned my cdplayer/radio on, to a station i desired (i picked 102.0, just because i wanted to...) and took my pocket knife and proceded to spread apart the wraps of the coil, one by one. (there are about 7 wraps) Basically, you just screw around spread one here and spread one there, do a few in the middle pretty soon you'll hear the song playing on the radio! Congratulations you have just tuned in your signal. Now, most likely, you will hear your song, but when you remove the knife from between the coils, you'll loose everything. DONT GET TICKED-IT HAPPENS!. Just spread the some a little more, if you see some that look too wide, close em up! pretty soon, youll have a signal that you dont have to hold the knife in to hear. You should also note that doing this modification overrides the 4 station selector switch-it will do nothing. If your tunecast currently works, you risk killing the thing all together. Also, when you put the new coil on the back of the board, you can no longer fit it in the case. it looks trashy but it works. Just put a drop of superglue on the headphone wires where the go on, and a drop on the wires going to and from the battery's and the on-off switch, just to make sure they dont come off. Also, DO -NOT- put a drop of superglue or ANYTHING on the coil to hold it down. The solder will have to do a good enough job. For the curious ones out there who want to know what happens if you DO put glue on the coil: It messes up the inductance properties of the coil and changes the frequency. I made that mistake the first time, with the first coil-I had my station all tuned in to what i wanted and i put one small drop of glue on it, and it faded right out. Now, im searching for a way to put some sort of antenna on this. All the attempts i have tried have involved melting the solder holding the existing antenna wire on, and slipping another one in there. That didnt work...but im still spawning ideas. Basically just play around with it, if you like feeling adventurous. And yes i know, if its working pretty good, but not good enough and you do something that messes it up, you WILL kick yourself, all the while saying 'why cant i leave good enough alone!?'...Dont worry, i did it too, a few times.... <
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>Good luck and happy modding....

Poor for big cities
The previous review was right - this transmitter is NOT FOR BIG CITIES. I live in Houston and all four of the preset stations are actually already being used here (hard to believe, but true). The weak signal of this device cannot overpower the FM stations here in Houston and so what you get is mostly static. <
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>However, Belkin makes a better model that has the entire FM dial avaliable, and I have had a pretty good experience with it. It is called the TuneCast II FM Transmitter (F8V3080. It costs a few dollars more (I think it was $50, whereas I paid $30 for this cheap one) but it is worth it if you live in a big city. The Tunecast II allows you to find stations that are available as you drive around the city, and it emits a stronger signal (at least it seems to) than this model. <
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>BTW, if anyone can find the older, analog FM transmitters, they actually have a stonger FM signal and always worked great for me back in the 90s... <
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