buzz from tape player

I've had my 2005 Prius for a little over 2 years and for the past year or so have used a tape adapter to listen to my ipod. It was working fine last Sat. Then, Sun evening when I tried to use it I just got a loud, fairly high pitched, buzzing sound! I've tried with 2 different tape adapters and a regular tape (they're hard to come across these days All with the same result.

The buzz does not happen when I use the fm radio or CD changer. It also only comes from the left speakers (I think, may have been right). I had an engineer friend who designed car radios and cd changers (up until 6 or 8 months ago) take a look. He seems to think it's a bad head on the tape player.

I'm going to try cleaning the tape player once I can get to the store to get one of those cleaning tapes. Does anyone have any other ideas/suggestions? Has anyone else experienced a similar problem and if so what did you do about it?

I think I'm going to buy some sort of aux input and use that (better sound quality I hear) but it would be nice to just cheaply fix the radio. I quit my job and went back to school full time recently and don't have tons of money to spend on this so I'm all for a cheap fix!

Thanks for any suggestions!

PS, I swear the parts of the car read the odometer and break just after the warranty runs out (just a couple months ago for me)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Juice @ Feb 3 2007, 11:05 PM) [snapback]385035[/snapback]</div>

No, the buzzing happens any time the tape player is in play mode. Stops for fast forward, rewind etc. I've tried messing w/ mp3 player controls and unplugging the adapter from the ipod, all to no avail.

Thanks, I will definitely try cleaning the head.

 

Thanks for the advice. I ended up buying a DICE. When it initializes the ipod properly it works great. Unfortunately the times it initializes properly seem to be the exception:-( At least it still plays the rest of the time, I just can't control the ipod w/ the steering wheel controls.