My good buddy in Pittsburgh, Flop (fabricator and owner of hot rod & scooter custom metalwork FLOP CUSTOM) has an eye, ear, and apprecitation for all things vintage and built with pride and quality from back in the day while also embracing the modern age of convenience and accessibilty. So when he recently purchased a working 1946 Zenith radio/phono he wanted to be able to play an iPod through it to hear his tunes with that warm old-timey tube sound. 

Lots of other folks have had the same idea, and there is a wealth of information out there about how to accomplish this...some very sound and some quite sketchy. I wanted to approach this in a proper well thought out manner. In short, basically what I did was construct a small outboard box with a jack for the auxillary, where the signal would transfer from stereo to mono. Plus, if there was any issue on the signal strength (from a low voltage device) I could add to this little box rather than wrestle with the Zenith's chassis constantly. I connected the auxillary to the amplifier via the volume control, and I think Flop and I were both surprised and pleased with the results. What we were hearing was a nicely analog, tube-driven amplified version of mp3 coming from his computer, or cell phone, or iPod. Plus, hearing some old country tunes filtered through an appliance of the era as pretty magical. Here's a brief video Flop took....