A few months ago, Paul bought a Griffin iTrip, an FM transmitter that enables him to listen to his iPod on any FM station in his car. I wasn’t happy with its performance in either of our cars. Even when it worked well, the signal wasn’t stong enough. At other times, the static was unbearable, whatever the station. So I certainly didn’t want an iTrip — or any FM transmitter.

I was hoping to get the NeoCar Ion. It corrects directly to the stereo, both piping in the music and charging the iPod. It even allows you to control the iPod with the stereo controls. Unfortunately, despite what their web site says, it is not available yet for my 2002 Mazda Tribute. (They were good enough to call me about it after I placed my order. They also promised to notify me once they get it working for my make and model of car.)

So until the NeoCar becomes available to me, I decided to content myself with a cassette adapter. However, the one I had wouldn’t work at all: it kept autoreversing in my cassette player. Happily, I quickly found these instructions on how to modify the cassette adapter so as to eliminate the problem. (Internal parts must be removed; it took about 5 minutes.) Interestingly, the sound quality is much, much better with the cassette adapter than with iTrip even at its best.

Most unexpected results, I must say!