MP3 player jack connection

Visti

Hi guys, I'm having a bit of a problem with my mp3 player. It's a Sandisk c240, which is discontinued now and even if it wasn't, it has Rockbox on it, so no warrenty. Anyway(!), the headphone jack has a loose connection, so that I will only get on channel of stereo unless I hold the jack at just the right angle. I can open it up, but what are the chances it's easily fixable and how? Via soldering, perhaps?

I had a similar problem with both mine and my girlfriends old Creative Zen Micros, but that was a really widespread issue and there was a guide for fixing it by inserting some paper in the right place. I'm assuming that's not an universal type of fix?

ZackSchilling

No, a paperclip might bend the metal just right to get good contact again, but headphone jacks go flaky for other reasons.

You'll have to open it, inspect the headphone jack to see what's wrong, and possibly replace it. If you're handy with a soldering iron, this should be a piece of cake. Even if you can fix it, I'm not sure it's worth the time or parts beyond the adventure of fixing it. A 1GB flash player is not worth your time trying to fix if it takes over an hour or costs any money.

Visti

ZackSchilling wrote: »

No, a paperclip might bend the metal just right to get good contact again, but headphone jacks go flaky for other reasons.

You'll have to open it, inspect the headphone jack to see what's wrong, and possibly replace it. If you're handy with a soldering iron, this should be a piece of cake. Even if you can fix it, I'm not sure it's worth the time or parts beyond the adventure of fixing it. A 1GB flash player is not worth your time trying to fix if it takes over an hour or costs any money.

Now, I would normally agree to this, but the c240 is a little special. First of all, it takes SDHC cards up to 32gb (or switching between several ~10gb cards for different music) - Also it runs rockbox smoothly. I would really like to repair it rather than dismissing it for these reasons. Even though its build quality is shoddy, its display is too small and it's ugly.

If somebody could point me towards something else with those capabilities, that would be much appreciated too, but so far, I'm definetly going to have a serious go a fixing this.

Visti

Just a little update in case somebody else has one of the c200 - after some research this seems to be a fairly common thing in both the c240 and c250s and it's because of a cold solder on the jack connection. It's fairly easy to take apart and put back together again and when it's stripped down to the PCB, you can press on the jack connection to see one of the connectors lifting clean off the PCB. I soldered it on there good and reinforced the other three connections and now it works fine. Also allowed me to clean some dust off my screen, which is usually covered by a thick layer of plastic.

If you have a soldering iron, go for it!

Barrakketh

Visti wrote: »

Just a little update in case somebody else has one of the c200 - after some research this seems to be a fairly common thing in both the c240 and c250s and it's because of a cold solder on the jack connection. It's fairly easy to take apart and put back together again and when it's stripped down to the PCB, you can press on the jack connection to see one of the connectors lifting clean off the PCB. I soldered it on there good and reinforced the other three connections and now it works fine. Also allowed me to clean some dust off my screen, which is usually covered by a thick layer of plastic.

If you have a soldering iron, go for it!

You can also apply a little epoxy that's safe for electronics around the joint to help prevent future problems after it has been resoldered. Older iPods had the same problem and that was also Apple's solution if you didn't feel like doing it yourself (or voiding the warranty).