Headphone jack broken.

[Philuk]

Hey guys. I bought my Eleven Rack about a month ago, the headphone jack has started to play up and tonight it finally went [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep]ty.

It doesn't play through the left headphone unless you wiggle it around. I assume that this is a loose connection most probably fixable by a resoldering.

I could bring it back to the shop but if they send it back to Avid they'll probably have it for weeks, which is annoying.

Is it simple enough to open it up and do it myself, or is it a long, tedious and complicated process?

If it's easy I'll have a go, if not I'll have to bring it in.

Thanks. :)

[musicman691]

Are you sure it's the jack in the 11R and not the connector to your cans? Molded connectors have a way of going bad all on their own. Not to mention most headphones nowadays use those adapters to go from the 1/8" to 1/4" connector and I've had those go bad as well.

[Benoni]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Are you sure it's the jack in the 11R and not the connector to your cans? Molded connectors have a way of going bad all on their own. Not to mention most headphones nowadays use those adapters to go from the 1/8" to 1/4" connector and I've had those go bad as well.

+1 on this.

Are you certain its the port and not your phones? Do you have any other phones you can try to make certain?

[Philuk]

Yea I've tried different headphones, adapters etc. It's definitely the input

So should I try myself or should I bring it in? One of the screws seems rounded off, annoyingly.

I'm in the UK, how long do they normally take to fix it?

[mediabiz]

Just before you attempt surgery (and considering the amount of surface mounted components and their very, VERY, thin PCB tracks in the 11R), I would have a crack at spraying a small amount of good quality contact cleaner in the headphone jack and then plug the headphone plug in and out a few times. Even though the 11R is almost new, its not impossible that some sort of crud may have worked its way into the headphone jack.
When I say "good quality contact cleaner" I mean something like Caig De-Oxit and nothing else. Even though it may not fix your problem, a can of De-Oxit is very handy to have around to clean up jacks and plugs and will never be a waste and it is the only contact cleaner you should ever use on quality gear.
If you find that the problem is still there, be VERY careful - only use a low wattage soldering iron with a very fine tip. The 11R has multiple PCB's and you'll find the phones, output to amp and guitar input are all on 1 PCB so it shouldn't be too hard to remove it completely from the case and work on it. Take it out and re-solder all of the PCB joints that are holding the headphone jack to the PCB - it may be just a dry joint. If that still doesn't fix it, it may be the jack is broken internally which means you'll have to source a replacement and swap it over.
I'm curious why one of the screws is rounded off though, especially considering it's only a month old - sounds like someone has already had a go at opening it up.

[Philuk]

Thanks for your reply!

I bought it second hand, I should have stated that.

I think I'll bring it back, you should have seen how I annihilated my iphone when I tried to to replace the screen.

It ended up in the bin!

I'll try the contact cleaner, great idea!

I'll keep you updated, thanks again, Phil.

[guitaramundo]

Hey Phil,
if you're any kind of handy with a soldering iron it's a piece of cake to replace the headphone out jack with a new one.
It cost me about $3.00 CDN for the part (better quality at an electronics store) and took all of 10 minutes to replace. Sadly, the eleven rack part is a plastic piece of junk. I replaced mine with a good one (metal) and it works just as good as the Avid part.

If you're no good at that kind of thing, your local guitar shop can replace it as it's a non warranty repair, hopefully they won't charge more than 20-30 $

Good Luck,
Jeff

ps i snapped mine when the headphones got snagged on my rolling chair.