Been using the onboards on the Zoom H4n for 3 or so years now. They're fine, for most of what I do, but my friend recently found his old external mic, and loaned it to me today, a Realistic stereo 33-1065. We were wanting to do a side by side comparison.
It has a left and right 1/8 (male)jacks, plugged into an adapter that squeezes them into 1 jack. Plugged that into the back of the Zoom, where the 1/8 (female) jack is. It ONLY received a left signal, even when I unplugged the adapter and only plugged the right mic jack into the Zoom. Still only registering a left signal. It did this both in stereo mode, and 4 channel mode.
The only other time I've used that back 1/8 jack was when plugging another friend's DAT recorder into the Zoom by way of plain old aux cable. In that case, the DAT was recorded in stereo, and in stereo mode, both left and right tracks recorded and responded accordingly. I'm sort of at a loss for where to begin trouble shooting, any suggestions? At first I thought it was the adapter, but even w/ the right mic plugged in, I'm only getting a left channel signal. Is it the Zoom's jack? Am I overlooking something critical here? Sort of new to the external experimentation game. (Also, it's very probably the mic has not been used since the mid 80s). Should I get some 1/8 to 1/4 adapters and plug them into the Zoom's 1/4 inputs?