uosux
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2004
- Posts
- 195
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Posted at nomadness.net:
Ok, I decided this was important enough to warrant its own thread instead of the one I had posted the complaint in. After spending the entire day tinkering with my Xtra, and running to Radio Shack to buy parts, I've fixed the headphone jack.
Initially, the left ear signal gave out. I thought I would fix it by soldering it, and opened it up. After discovering that there are three contact points for the three parts of the plug, I located the one for the left channel. The three parts are (from wire side of plug to tip), a ground, right channel, left channel. The left channel contact point had snapped from the soldering. The reason this point breaks is that it the end of the plug, so the most pressure is exerted on it when the plug is wobbled around. It is only a weak little metal tab, so its no suprise it broke :roll:.
My first attempt to solder it failed miserably: I managed to end the signal to the right ear too, and the backlgiht died. I felt like killing myself. After moping around depressed for the day, I decided to give ti another shot after pickign up a desolderer. The difficulty in trying to fix the issue was it was a cramped space, and the left channel plug is at the end, practically under the lcd sceen. I could not see if there were any additional contacts from the circuitry that I was going to ruin while soldering. After messing with it for a while, I decided to remove the headphone jack entirely. It is only attached by the three contact points, so I desoldered and pulled it out (its only a small little box, size of plug).
To see if the loose area was the only problem, and try to diagnose the right channel, i created a remote headphone hookup. i took 3 wires and bent them to the plug, one for each section (left, right, ground). Then I touched each one to a contact point and... sound miraclasly came back! What I discovered however, is that the contact points where the tabs coming off the jack are soldered too arn't the goal. There is a little tiny box thing coming out of the circuit board a milimeter or two from the contact squares. I would get the signal when I touched the wire to those, I guess they are the built in amps or something (I had to do this because I managed to have one of the contact points slide off). My plan was set, all I had to do was put the jack back in, and solder the amp box directly to the metal tabs, and solder the ground point back down.
Since the back left channel tab was broken off though, this was the problem. I could not simply resolder it on. However, instead of trying to fix the tab, I managed to bypass the broken spot, and connect the top metal part on top of the jack that is responsible for the left channel, directly to the amp box. There is a decent gap, so I had to use a piece of coper mesh wire (its actually the desoldering gauze I was using). After hooking both sides up, it worked perfectly! The copper gauze I discovered is a double blessing. Since it is flexible, and does not rely on connecting to the high stress point that broke earlier, it will likely not break again. This is vital because I didn't feel like opening the thing up and resoldering every couple months when the stress eventually broke it.
I'm sorry I didn't take a pictures, but there isn't much to show (+ I didn't have a camera). Once youget in there, and remove the jack by desoldering, you will see exactly where the problem lies, than its just a matter of getting the three connections back again. As I stated earlier, the reason for all of the breakings is the plug puts stress at the bottom contact point when it swivels slightly. I have a straight Grado plug, so this is especially an issue. However, I presume it will happen with any plug, only at different rates. The implications of this are very large: I hypothosize that every plug has a high chance of breaking at that weak point, and the longer it is owned, the higher the risk. It seems some people suffer from slighly weaker connections, and/or put varying stress on the plug. While I still love my Zen Xtra for all its usefullness, Creative sure dropped the ball on this part. It very well may have slipped under there radar because it doesn't show up for some time, but the connection of the headphone jack is substandard at best. If they had taken the time to solidly wire it into place, none of these problems would happen.
I hope this report is a little helpful to anyone. I feel your pain, my jack broke, I was going through hell and didn't know exactly how to fix it. PS my backlight is still dead, so unless it is a coincidence, I managed to burn it out while working on it. At this point I could care less though
Ok, I decided this was important enough to warrant its own thread instead of the one I had posted the complaint in. After spending the entire day tinkering with my Xtra, and running to Radio Shack to buy parts, I've fixed the headphone jack.
Initially, the left ear signal gave out. I thought I would fix it by soldering it, and opened it up. After discovering that there are three contact points for the three parts of the plug, I located the one for the left channel. The three parts are (from wire side of plug to tip), a ground, right channel, left channel. The left channel contact point had snapped from the soldering. The reason this point breaks is that it the end of the plug, so the most pressure is exerted on it when the plug is wobbled around. It is only a weak little metal tab, so its no suprise it broke :roll:.
My first attempt to solder it failed miserably: I managed to end the signal to the right ear too, and the backlgiht died. I felt like killing myself. After moping around depressed for the day, I decided to give ti another shot after pickign up a desolderer. The difficulty in trying to fix the issue was it was a cramped space, and the left channel plug is at the end, practically under the lcd sceen. I could not see if there were any additional contacts from the circuitry that I was going to ruin while soldering. After messing with it for a while, I decided to remove the headphone jack entirely. It is only attached by the three contact points, so I desoldered and pulled it out (its only a small little box, size of plug).
To see if the loose area was the only problem, and try to diagnose the right channel, i created a remote headphone hookup. i took 3 wires and bent them to the plug, one for each section (left, right, ground). Then I touched each one to a contact point and... sound miraclasly came back! What I discovered however, is that the contact points where the tabs coming off the jack are soldered too arn't the goal. There is a little tiny box thing coming out of the circuit board a milimeter or two from the contact squares. I would get the signal when I touched the wire to those, I guess they are the built in amps or something (I had to do this because I managed to have one of the contact points slide off). My plan was set, all I had to do was put the jack back in, and solder the amp box directly to the metal tabs, and solder the ground point back down.
Since the back left channel tab was broken off though, this was the problem. I could not simply resolder it on. However, instead of trying to fix the tab, I managed to bypass the broken spot, and connect the top metal part on top of the jack that is responsible for the left channel, directly to the amp box. There is a decent gap, so I had to use a piece of coper mesh wire (its actually the desoldering gauze I was using). After hooking both sides up, it worked perfectly! The copper gauze I discovered is a double blessing. Since it is flexible, and does not rely on connecting to the high stress point that broke earlier, it will likely not break again. This is vital because I didn't feel like opening the thing up and resoldering every couple months when the stress eventually broke it.
I'm sorry I didn't take a pictures, but there isn't much to show (+ I didn't have a camera). Once youget in there, and remove the jack by desoldering, you will see exactly where the problem lies, than its just a matter of getting the three connections back again. As I stated earlier, the reason for all of the breakings is the plug puts stress at the bottom contact point when it swivels slightly. I have a straight Grado plug, so this is especially an issue. However, I presume it will happen with any plug, only at different rates. The implications of this are very large: I hypothosize that every plug has a high chance of breaking at that weak point, and the longer it is owned, the higher the risk. It seems some people suffer from slighly weaker connections, and/or put varying stress on the plug. While I still love my Zen Xtra for all its usefullness, Creative sure dropped the ball on this part. It very well may have slipped under there radar because it doesn't show up for some time, but the connection of the headphone jack is substandard at best. If they had taken the time to solidly wire it into place, none of these problems would happen.
I hope this report is a little helpful to anyone. I feel your pain, my jack broke, I was going through hell and didn't know exactly how to fix it. PS my backlight is still dead, so unless it is a coincidence, I managed to burn it out while working on it. At this point I could care less though
