I have an older stereo system which I use mostly for listening to vinyl and CDs. I also have a cassette player which I rarely use.
Currently I have my turntable routed to my EQ which then has an out to the 'phono' input on my receiver.
Unfortunately with this setup I can't use the EQ with CDs as my CD player has an 'out' that goes directly to the 'CD' input.
I feel like I had this set up so that I could EQ any input but don't remember how I got this to work. I've googled and haven't found anything that explains this clearly, like I'm 5.
I feel like I had to loop things through my cassette deck or something.
Here are the connections on the back of my Receiver.
Possibly you had everything connected to the receiver and then the tape rec out going into the cassette input and from the cassette tape out back to the receiver tape input. Edit - sorry with the EQ between that last connection