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I had this Volca Bass for about a year when the internal speaker on it stopped working. It’s a terrible speaker, but it’s kind of handy to have when you’re just playing with it as a portable device. It’s also nice to have an alternative speaker when you’re messing around with it. More importantly, it was just frustrating to me that it didn’t work. I had stayed away from fixing it for a while, but then thought about hooking it up to check out the waveforms on my oscilloscope. While it was on my desk, I decided to crack it open and see what everything looks like.

The problem was this: When the headphone jack is in an unplugged state, there should be sound coming out of the speaker on the bottom. When a plug has been put in place, the signal to the speaker is interrupted and the sound will instead go through the headphone. Others have had this issue before (Gearslutz and Korgforums), but most people in this forum seemed to find that it worked for them if they cleared out the debris from the headphone jack socket. That was not the case with me. Time to open it!

All screws are visible and you’ll have to take off a few (more than a dozen). You’ll also need to pull the speaker wire, out from under the plastic backing to loosen the slack. You do NOT need to undo the copper tape that you’ll see. As always when handling open electronics, make sure it’s unplugged and batteries removed, also make sure you aren’t statically charged. No rubbing your socks on the carpet beneath you while you do these things. I have some videos with the board plugged in and turned on, but I don’t advise this. Be careful if you do. I think the capacitors are pretty light here and the voltage is only 9v, so there’s probably not much of a risk of shock. There’s more of a risk of shorting out the board.

I studied the soldered on jack a bit, and even entertained unsoldering it to look inside. If you look closely, though, you can actually lift the black plastic housing off of the soldered part. I used a very small flathead screwdriver and very gently (and patiently) twisted the screwdriver in between the housing and base to move it up from multiple sides. You will need this same kind of patience when putting this back on. You may also want to mark one side so that you can remember the orientation. If not, I’ll give you a closeup later to show you which way it should be oriented.

After exposing the leads, you can see that there is a very slight space in between the contact point closest to the inside of the board, and the middle. If you’re playing recklessly (like myself), you can simultaneously play the board and touch the leads. If the problem is this jack, completing the connection should make sound come out of your speaking link mine in the video. I’ve also showed how it sounds when I plug it into my Bose Soundlink. Muuuuuch better sound.

To fix this, I applied a single square of electric tape to the outside of the connection point that moves when you pull the headphone jack out. The tape was about as wide as the gap. You could also try bending it, but I went with the assumption that if it bent out once, it could bend out of place again.

After applying the tape square, I then put the plastic housing back on. If you lost track of the sides, take a look inside the housing from underneath. Once side will have a shorter space to fit a lead. That will go on the outside. On the sides of the housing, you’ll see some vertical lines. Those will go on the side. You will need to align the the metal connectors to the spaces in the plastic housing when you slide it back on. I recommend sliding it back on very slowly and methodically, much like you took it off. With the extra tape, there’s going to be more resistance. If you notice that the middle connectors are spreading into a “Y” shape, you may have them misaligned. Remove the housing and repeat the process.

If you end up applying too much force (like I did. Oops!), you can use some small needle nosed pliers to straighten them out and try again. The housing should be level with the other jacks when you’re complete.

Plug the Volca in, and give it a try. Hopefully everything works as well as mine!