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Repairing Loose Headphone Jack

What you need

  1. Repairing Loose Headphone Jack, Open the case: step 1, image 1 of 2 Repairing Loose Headphone Jack, Open the case: step 1, image 2 of 2
    • Before you start remove a possibly inserted flash card!

    • Gently, insert a guitar pick (or a similar plastic pry tool) into the upper right corner of the Clip+ between the two case halves.

    • Be careful as the plastic is prone to scratches. Only use slight force.

    • With the guitar pick inserted into the two case halves make your way around the edges of the case.

    • The plastic noses will come off easily.

  2. Repairing Loose Headphone Jack: step 2, image 1 of 2 Repairing Loose Headphone Jack: step 2, image 2 of 2
    • Carefully lift up the battery which is glued to a memory chip.

    • The battery is wired to the mainboard. Be careful to not rip the wires.

    • Identify the three soldering points around the headphone jack that are shown in the second picture. It is likely that at least one of them got loose.

  3. Repairing Loose Headphone Jack: step 3, image 1 of 2 Repairing Loose Headphone Jack: step 3, image 2 of 2
    • Take a thin soldering iron and heat up the soldering points one by one.

    • Be careful to not touch any other parts on the mainboard with the soldering iron.

    • After soldering the headphone jack should sit tight on the mainboard.

    • Finally, take your preferred headphones and test the result.

Conclusion

To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order - of course without de-soldering.

15 other people completed this guide.

Baschtl

Member since: 12/02/12

1,525 Reputation

5 Guides authored

9 Comments

Thanks a lot for this repair guide.

I always struggle when trying to open tiny plastic cases like this one, so it's alway good to see how many of those snap hooks you have to expect.

Opening the case was - as expected - pretty difficult, it took me about ~45 minutes or so. Re-soldering the pins was comparitively easy.

Helge Jordan - Reply

Worked exactly as described

maurizio butti - Reply

I'm on my fourth Clip+. They never last more than 1.5 to 2 years, which I suppose is good value for the money, since I use mine almost constantly as a media player and my portable USB drive. One survived two drops into the pool but the battery finally gave out. Two others simply quit working, I think because the firmware got into an unrecoverable state. My fourth one is now having mechanical problems in the USB jack, but I think I can fix it with spare parts from the others. They can be taken apart if you are gentle. The guitar pick is a good idea.

It's a shame that the mechanical parts of this player are underdesigned. Mine have all had the headphone jack start to fail, to stop retaining the plug. The USB interface also gets stubborn from time to time, file transfers often slow way down to the point of locking up the host computer too. I've never understood that.

Larry - Reply

Have my second running with Rockbox since over 5 years. The first one had a hardware defect after a few months and got replaced by Sansa. Am now looking at replacing the battery.

dawg -

This is all new to me...so I need more info. Like - what soldering points - where? Isn't everything soldered to the board? I do jewelry work, so the actual soldering should not be a problem. More pictures would be very helpful for me, as well. I want to be able to fix this mp3 player...battery is still good, and plenty of room for more stuff. New earphones didn't help, so it must be in the player. Thanks.

Harriet Russell - Reply

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