Sansa Repair Guide

Repair a broken headphone jack contact

Lateral forces on a Sansa E200 headphone jack (female) may eventually cause one (or more) jack contacts to break away from the PC board. (This could occur on other similar devices. Thus, similar repair principles may apply.)

There are the three typical connections provided for a 1/8" stereo headphone plug via the Sansa headphone jack: With the Sansa headphone jack pointing upward (Sansa oriented with scroll-wheel below display) the contacts on the BACK of the PC board are, from top to bottom, common, right, & left.

This article only addresses detachment of the left channel (bottom-most contact) jack pad from the pc board.

The left channel (bottom) jack pad needs to be connected to the bottom of the SMD resistor immediately above the jack pad on the back of the PC board.

The entire silver bottom of the SMD resistor is viable solder contact area for the left jack pad. However, prolonged heat is likely to cause damage to such delicate components. Draw solder from the pad to the resistor-end efficiently!

It might be advisable to affix the jack with strategically-placed hot-glue before soldering. Do not apply hot-glue where it will interfere with the Sansa housing - or future repairs to any jack pads.

[Note that a memory board plugged on to the back of an E200 PC board partially covers the headphone jack. The memory board is removable. It is secured only with tape and double-sided sticky-pads.]

[Other Sansa E200 PCB images are available. There are also images for a similar repair on the Sansa C200. E-mail: coiley@hotmailBLAH_BLAH.com - You MUST put the word "Sansa" in the subject field. Messages are checked monthly.]