My co-worker recently bought a very stylish retro-looking record player (portable) from Restoration Hardware. Unfortunately, they no longer ship the AC/DV 12V adapter that lets you actually run the thing.
My co-worker went across the street to Radio Shack and bought an adapter (AKA a wall-wart). She gets the box home, opens it, and learns that Radio Shack has cleverly done away w/ making adpaters in different sizes. Now they all have a truncated end into which you plug an “Adaptaplug,” depending on the size of the jack on your piece of electronics. The box says, on the front, “Choose one of our Adaptaplugs, free!” but neither my co-worker nor the clerks noticed it.
So she goes back to the shack to claim her free adaptaplug. No problem, except that they don’t know which size adaptaplug to give to her, and tell her that she needs to haul her record player back in.
Here’s the GQ: I thought that all similar-voltage adpapter plugs were the same size (i.e, 4.5V DC were one size, 9V DC were another size, 12V DC were yet another size). Since she knows her record player needs 12V DV, shouldn’t she be able to simply choose the right size plug w/o hauling in her record player?
And (if that’s true) does anyone happen to know what the diameter of the 12V DC plug is?
FYI, here’s the R.S. Adaptaplug page:
I bought two of those Radio Shack multi-voltage adapters with the adaptaplug a few years ago. I have dozens of devices and I got sick of trying to figure out which adapter went with which device. To avoid the problem your friend is having, I also bought every shape and size “tip” I could find. They were cheap and came in little bundles of 8 or 10. I haven’t found an electronic device yet for which I couldn’t substitute one of those adapters. I had some trouble with the RS website, so sorry no link. Go back to the store and pick up a few in the general shape of the original adapter: Male or female, 1/8 inch or 1/4 inch, etc. You’ll probably need the spares sometime in the future for something else.