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Instead of hooking a stereo's + and posts to a slave jack, and running phone line extension cord with RJ-11 plugs at each end to another jack in the phone circuit, you can skip the slave jacks and attach the stereo leads to the stripped end of a length of phone wire with an RJ-11 at the far end. Then, you just plug the RJ-11 directly into the phone circuit.

Carefully split down the middle, peel back, and cut off an inch of plastic sheath from a phone line extension that is long enough to reach from instrument to the nearest phone jack, and that has an RJ-11 jack at the far end. Four tiny color-coded wires can be peeled out of the insulating sheath. A half-inch from the ends of the Y/B pair of wires, very carefully cut around the insulation with a sharp Exactotype craft knife. The multistrand wire inside is very tender, so cut slow, shallow, and with care, stopping when you feel the blade begin to scratch the wire inside. Slip off the insulation. If you take more than one or two stands of wire with it, make new cuts till when you remove the insulation, most of the wire strand is intact and exposed.

Strip an inch of insulation from the ends of the + and - hookup wires connected to the transmitter's output lugs and the output's input lugs. Wrap the springy multistrand phonecord wire around the solid hookup wire as best you can.

The best connection is to solder the two together and insulate with heatshrink tubing or electrician's tape. If you don't have an ongoing need for a soldering iron and silver electronics solder, there is no need to buy them. Radio Shack sells lowtemp foil-solder-you wrap it around the joint and melt it with a match or cigarette lighter. Less effective but cheaper still is to wrap the joint tightly with a length of extra wire of either type and tape it tightly.

Once the connection is made, just plug the RJ-11 is into the phone circuit and transmit away.

IT WILL ALL WORK IF...you remember to keep each color wire's polarity and its connections consistent throughout.

Dual lacks

To have both a phone and your secret-circuit application installed at the same wiring block, replace the singlesocket jack with a multiplier. You can wire in an all new dual-socket jack or plug a multiple-jack adapter into the original. You can get adapters now that convert a single modular jack into five; use one for the phone, another for the modem, a third for an answering machine over the R/G wire pair, and still have two left over to run music and an intercom system over the secret circuit on the Y/B pair.

Plugs and Coax

If the gadgetry hooked up to your secret circuit does not feed in and out via screw terminals but uses plugs, hookup is more complicated. Some plugs lead into a pair of conventional multistrand wires ...but there will be four wires if it is a stereo unit.

As with the phone, it does not matter which lead goes on which of the Y/B pair, but + must be connected with + and - to - at the originating and receiving units.

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