Here is picture of my first try. I was using #26AWG OFC Mogami wires. They are more flexible then #24 Cardas. The pads broke off so easy that I though that it was bad join. Then I filed off corner of the chip and soldered directly to the legs – same story. The wires too stiff and heavy.
But I want you to look at the ribbon cable receptacle.
The G (red dot) is were you connect the ground wire. It’s the first pin on the bottom right side. The only other place were I found analog ground were pins 29,30 on the dock connector.
The H (red dot) – hold switch pin. It’s the first pin on the top right and marked with small v. The problem is when you disconnect the ribbon cable from the main board it will lock the ipod. Apparently Apple designed it that way. So to overcome the problem and keep the ipod in unlocked position you need to make bridge between those pins. I just carefully melted plastic until the pads were cleared. The bridge is necessary because I cleared the phone jack board from all parts so the hold switch was no longer working.
You can keep the ribbon cable but then you have to glue capacitors in the corner like Red Wine did it. Here is the picture.
Next you need to cut the male receptacle from the ribbon cable and glue the same size piece of cooper board to the top of it. This “bridge” will serve as a transitional point between soft cable from the DAC chip ( I used cable from my $50 died Sony IEM ) and wire that will go to the phone jack ( I used #26AWG Mogami) . See picture below.
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Then I drilled holes in cleaned from parts PCB and mounted the capacitors and resistors with point to point soldering. Be sure to use wire tubes on capacitors legs that goes through holes because the board are multilayered and even if you don’t see the tiny traces on surface they could touch them internally! Just to be safe. I used 100 ohm resistors in series and 47Kohm to the analog ground for each channel. You could skip at list series resistors and solder BG legs to the phone jacks legs directly. Plastic tray that supports the board has holes in it. If you use wires you can solder them through the holes. To make it easier you can just file the whole thing down as I did.
Very important! Don’t forget to glue ribbon cable receptacles together.
Also be sure that the "EQ" and "sound check" settings on your ipod OFF.
Happy Soldering!
