A long long time ago, I was faced with a problem...

I needed a way to be able to quickly switch back and forth between my computer speakers and my headphones.

Sure, even then multimedia speakers had the headphone port on them, but this wasn't really what I was looking for. I wanted something I didn't have to plug-in or unplug all the time.

I was looking for something that would allow me to leave my connections intact and at the push of a button or flip of a switch easily move back and forth.

You need to remember, this was probably twenty years ago or so. These days you can find what I needed for less than $20 USD on Amazon.

See here

Since something like that nice little switch from Amazon wasn't available back then, heck I am not even sure Amazon was around back then, I decided to make my own.

I'll have to ask you to forgive the condition the switch is in. As I mentioned before, this thing is OLD! This is the original solution to my problem I conconted all those years ago. I have been through many desks, speakers, and headphones since then but this little guy has remained steadfast and still accomplishes daily what I designed it for.

At the time, my soldering skills were not that great, so I used a much larger box than I probably needed. I wanted to make sure I had enough wire and space for everything. I am sure I probably have some attenuation issues going on inside the box, but I have never really noticed any negative effects on the output side. Music is constantly vibrant and volumonous whether I am using my headphones or my speakers.

The drywall plugs that you see in the picture here serve no purpose but to fill the holes I drilled wrong on this side. I thought it would be a good idea to have them evenly spaced out. It wasn't until after I had drilled the holes I realized it would have been better to group the outputs together and leave the input isolated.

That is exactly what I did on the other side. The two jacks to the left are for my outputs, one to my headphones and one to my speakers. The jack on the right is for the input from the computer.

The cool thing about this switch is it also acts as a quick mute button. If I am working at my desk with my music on and someone walks into my office or the phone rings, I can quickly reach past my keyboard and flip the switch. If headphones are plugged in it will simply re-direct the sound to them. If they are not plugged in, the signal dies, but either way I have still quickly muted my speakers.

As I said, back when I created this thing, my soldering skills were pretty horrendous. I thought I knew what I was doing but looking back now it makes me a little sad to see how sloppy it all is. I apologize as well for the blurriness. I was having some focus issues with my cell phone camera.

Basically I took what I think was a three pole switch and I brought the left channel, right channel, and ground into it from the input jack. I then just ran wires carrying each channel and the ground from the switch to the outputs.

I bought all of the components when I was working at Radio Shack. Even though prices were much cheaper back then, I have a hard time believing I made this for much less than what some of the ones on Amazon are available for today.

That being said, these didn't exist back then and it was kind of cool being able to say I made it myself.

This is a look at the underside of the top of the switch. I probably should have used red and white wire as that is the standard, but I am guessing this is all they had available at the time. You can see I probably used a bit heavier guage of wire than I actually needed to, but I wanted to ensure there was a significant path for the signal to follow.

The maker movement has made things like Raspberry Pi's and other small computers very popular these days. With 3D printers, people are designing and creating things like never before. Keeping all of that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to share this throwback project I did all those years ago.

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