 I have a new loudspeaker. This is a JBL Pulse 2, which I got from someone at work. It is in fact broken. They dropped it and it stopped working. So what I'm going to do is take the lid off and see if I can find out what's wrong with it. Or, you know, just see what's inside it. Now, I did cheat site the other looks at some teardown instructions. So I know that what you do is you take these rubber bits off somehow and start from there. This actually looks tougher than it seems. Maybe use this that comes off. There's supposed to be some screws in here. A bit of suspicion that that doesn't pull off and it's in fact glued on. These are the whoopers. I don't really want to put pressure on them. Let's see if I can lever this without doing it. Nope, that does not come off. It's not doing much for the plastic, I have to say. I need to try and get the spudger in enough to lever, which it's not doing. Maybe it is these rubber things after all. Yeah, that does not feel right. That feels like the rubber is glued onto the plastic. Yeah, that feels just the same. So maybe the end caps come off. You see, I've already damaged the plastic around here. The person who gave it this to me said that they don't actually like mind if they get it back. So we'll see. Yeah, that ain't working. Let's try some more spudging tools. Right, that's actually peeling the rubber off here and I don't think that's supposed to peel off. I may have to stop looking at instructions again. Instructions I found did say very clearly that the rubber ends come off and there are screws dismantled to the inside. It does seem to be slowly budging, I have to say. Right, it is in fact glued in, but there are the screws the instructions were talking about. So this is going to be moderately exciting to put back. I've got some glue. Okay, and there I can focus other screws to get at the rest of the thing. Now I also have to get the other side off as well. So let's do some more crude levering. So this thing was dropped. It's a Bluetooth speaker by the way. It's battery powered, talks to a phone by radio, usual stuff. It's got the two big woofers at each end and underneath the grill there will be multiple high-pitched speakers. They do a pretty good job of sounding like a good speaker. And as it's been dropped I probably what's happened is that something's broken off inside and it may be an easy fix. Or it may just turn out to not work at all, particularly once I've taken the lid off. The instructions I found said that removing the battery was quite hard and if they thought that that was hard compared to this. No camera footage, it just stopped again after a few seconds. So there's this rubber plug and I'm sure there's something interesting under it. I don't really see the metal thing. So the controls are underneath this rubber mat here. The thing is supposed to be, I think the thing actually is waterproof. So this is probably going to be a fairly serious rubber mat. I wonder if it just peels off. Well there's certainly plenty of glue. I'm wondering at what point I need to just give up and go look at the instructions. The thing is that the metal cage is stuck in reasonably well. Yeah this rubber mat comes off. It's just kind of stuck down with glue. So how's it fasten down at the end? I should point out the thing is completely defunct. So if I can get it working that's great. If I can't then that's also not a problem. It is attached firmly at the ends. I can see the buttons which are under here. There's little studs in the rubber that push down onto the micro switches. So you can see here. You can see the screws that hold the thing on. But how do they fasten down? That's so it feels rigid at the ends. Now I'm going to read the... Wait, what's this? Oh, have I got this completely... Am I doing this? Yes, I am in fact doing this entirely the hard way. This just peels off. Right, great. Okay, well here are some more of the works. And there are more screws. These are slightly bigger so I'm back to have a short break while I look for a better screwdriver. Okay, my trusty socket's set to the rescue. Now, I expect that the main board is underneath this lot. So that does not actually... The thing rolls around and tends to push the screws. So let's just corral these. These are the outside screws. And these are the inside screws. Ah, these are different. You can see these micro switches here. I strongly expect are tapped directly to the main board. So I expect the main board to be on the other side of this, whatever it is. Does this black panel come off? No. Does this white panel come off? Yes. And there are some more screws in here. Underneath this piece of white panel, I can see some priors here. So I think what's happening is that the metal cage is clipped onto the white plastic. And the white plastic screws onto the chassis. So we need to remove the cage somehow without damaging it too badly. At which point the white plastic would just lift off, giving us access to the actual electronics. Now this is awkward because it's also glued down. I need to do these other side in the same way. And this cage does actually need to be bent to get it out. It's brassened down at the back. Okay, can we get the plastic off? The plastic is in fact a chassis. It goes all the way around. Is there more clips? Does it look like clips? No, that's one piece. Let's remove these. Has that helped? Yes. This is loose. But it's not coming out. So the camera here, which is used, but it's not a camera, it's a light sensor. It's used for something to do with, you know, iridescent LEDs. I would be very surprised if that wasn't attached to the main board. Okay, I can see how the cage has fastened on. There are two little hooks each side here. But I don't think I want to get those off. I think that this somehow pulls straight out of the chassis. Now, the other thing I found was this little rubber plug with... Oh, it's a microphone. Okay. Right, it wasn't a lever hole. Oops. This moves up and down. It doesn't move sideways. It's all good and solid. Not this side. This thing is dreadful. So what? Does this peel off? I don't really want to. Well, I can see the two screws in here, but I can't get at them. Yeah, they're completely inaccessible. Which makes me think that, in fact, this slides out somehow. But it doesn't. Unless there's some more screws I haven't found. What's this? Ah. This is the access plug to the inside. And it keeps the inside automatically sealed. So if I push the plug in, and then push the one side of the woofer speaker, see the other side come out? Yeah. Is that visible on the camera? There you go. But if I remove the plug, it doesn't because the air is wheezing out of that hole instead. So that goes back in. Right, well, that actually suggests that this entire plastic drum is sealed which means that all this plastic stuff here must be on the outside. So I believe that this should just slide out of the outer plastic shell. But I don't see any way for it to do this. I wonder if I actually really do need to remove the cage completely. And how? And the little hooks up. Right, that just pops off. Leaving us with a fuzzy tube. I think this thing is solid all the way around. Is this lever at all? It does a bit, you know. I'm going to be getting the glue out later. Right, well, that has revealed screws inside the cage where I can't get at them. If the thing slides out, it's got to slide out this way. Just pushing is not the answer. Wait a minute. It does come off. It's all gummed together with waterproofing, so it's very hard. There we go. Right, this gives us access to the bottom board and two screws. Move these, put this back. Now, great. I have to unplug these two boards. Yee, gods. So the big one is the bottom board. Yee, screw drop. And then tweezers. Oh, it's one of these. Right, it doesn't unplug. I quite like these. They are friction fit PCB mounts. You push this thing out to unlock, then the ribbon just pushes in, and then when you push this thing down, it clamps. Now, do we get the same on this? I think it's going to be all covered up in gunk. I believe it is. But gunky. So let's try pushing these. Potted. Someone has added glue to hold the thing in place, really for waterproofing. That means that the clamp won't work, because I can't move it. I really don't know what to do about that. It may just be impossible to get some of this stuff out. Why would you do this? That's completely not what these little clamps are for. They're explicitly to allow people like me to do stuff like this. You know, remove the board for maintenance. Or, you know, just destroy it. Just to get it to move. It's never going to move. It's wrecked. Oh, that's moving a little. I think I'm going to just need so much force to end up destroying the socket. Well, this is only the sensor for the brightly colored lights. So, it's not really critical infrastructure. Coming out. It might be, but I don't think it's going to go back in again. It's the buttons. That's the important bit. And they are safely unplugged. All right. Well, that came out. But the connector just tore. Yeah, well, I guess that was going to happen. Never mind. Right. So, so now we can see the two main speakers inside. Various bits of wiring. Two screws here, which are presumably for the next bit. And the main board will no doubt be inside. This, I think, is removing the speaker end cap. If a suspicion is actually glued down. Yeah, I don't think that's doing anything at all. The electronics board is the bit I'm trying to get at. And the battery is probably underneath this. Surprisingly robust. And here we have long lines of LEDs that shine through the case and make it all, like, pretty and stuff. Well, it's days of ambient lighting are over. But you can probably make it as garish as you like using the buttons. And that's probably a terrible Bluetooth app as well. Everything about Bluetooth is terrible. I used to have to program for this stuff. It's terrible. These four screws are almost certainly just holding the speaker down. So I don't think there will be any particular interest in the feeling. This is a lid. It's not moving. Okay. Keep up. Go and look at the instructions. Okay, well, as you may have predicted, I am in fact an idiot. These things are not glued down, even though they look like they're glued down and they just peel off. Thus giving access to the other side of these ribbon cables which are plugged onto the motherboard. So I am, in fact, destroyed this one for nothing. Never mind. I will, in fact, just snip off this cable. That is, that's torn. Let me just double check. I believe it is. So that's never going to go back on again. So let's just cut this off to stop it dangling. Right. Now on the inside, we have the motherboard here which is like gummed in. We've got the wire for the microphone which is here. We've got the Bluetooth antenna which is here. Let's have a look at the other end. Lots of connectors. Now the issue is that it just doesn't work after being dropped. So I would expect to see one of these cables snapped off but I don't see anything except lots of this horrible gummy stuff. I do not believe the motherboard will be easy to get out. Sorry. That is the wire to the button here. The microphone is this tiny little thin wire here and that's the microphone there. I do see that they've gummed down a number of these connectors including the one to the USB. Let's go grab a USB cable and plug it in. Okay. One USB socket plug. Right. And nothing seems to have happened which is what happened the last time I plugged it in. So if a wire has sheared inside the potting compound then it's going to be really hard to diagnose. Let me just reattach the bottom board like so because there are LEDs on it you see. None of them lit up so I don't think that helped. This one is power so let's try pushing that one. What I really want to do is to get the PCB out. Now that I know a little bit more about how it works I'd rather want to reassemble some of this. That was a thing that this screwed into. There should be a plastic piece that goes under here. I'm pretty sure. Yes. I'm an idiot of this. Okay. I cannot... I want to screw this down to stop it flapping about because I can't without the main plastic chassis on. So let's just unplug this. The PCB I can see is fastened in with big chunks of hot glue. And even if I could get that out then all these plugs are in the way. So I wouldn't be able to remove the PCB without either removing the speakers. I can see that the screws for the speaker cage the LED cage that goes over the speakers are under the wires here. So I'm not really sure how that's going to work. I can remove the screws for the speakers and let the speakers move a little bit out against the cage The inside is essentially this huge wodge of metal wires and it's all wrapped up in this foam stuff. A lot of plugs are hot glued down. Which is really for robustness. I don't see any obvious broken wires. The main USB connector is kind of skewed. That's in fact the main USB connector unplugged. Let's see if I can get that plugged back on again. That might be USB data. I think this one is USB power. Because that's quite interesting because I can get these off and there's a bit more slack than the others. I can see that this wire runs round here underneath the board and will eventually meet up with this thing down here. The socket is a label to see so I can see that this one is marked ground USBV. Now this big chunky one here I expect this goes to the battery. This little one here is labeled mic. I think the battery is under here. In order to get the battery out you have to remove the main board. Check the instructions again. There are apparently latches that lift this piece off. You can get at the battery from there. This seems kind of unlikely to me and I think that the instructions I've got are for a different model. It's true. There's nothing useful in there. I said remove the screws from the black centerpiece which I presume is this bit here. Here's the plug I mentioned earlier. There is one thing I can try. It's just to just check to see if voltage is getting to the board. I was going to just stick the tweezer and try to connect the multimeter to the socket itself but I don't think that's going to work. Let's plug that back onto the board and connect to the two pins on the back of the board. I've got five volts. This means power is reaching the board but it's not turning on. This, to be honest, does not bode well for the rest of the board. I kind of assumed that the fault was just a broken wire in the power distribution but that seems not to be the case. I wonder if it's the battery. The thing is probably defunct now anyway. There's a groove under here. I've reckoned that's where the latches for the battery compartment are. I've got the latches but it's not coming off. I see a lot of glue in there. The instructions did warn that there is a lot of glue holding the thing down and you'd probably use a hot air gun. I don't have a hot air gun so you'd use brute force ignorance instead. Here is the battery which looks commendably non-exploded which is always nice to see in a battery. This is really firmly glued in. That's a 2 watt hour. Wow! There's a lot of battery. Here we have the USB and aux connector and it goes through some potting into the works. Here we have where the cables to the PCB come through. The correct way to remove the button board is to unplug them from here, prize all this potting out of the way and then run the cables through there and that looks pretty horrible to me. Can I actually plug the battery out? Oh, that's not so bad. The battery is not bulging. It is indeed a 22 watt hour lithium polymer battery. Wow! It must be something useful I can do with that. That's quite interesting. Have a look at this. I thought there was a flex PCB connecting it to the board but it's not, it's actually wires. I'm given that there are five of them in three different colours. I wonder if this is one of those batteries that doesn't have a protection circuit. I do feel there is something at the top of that battery module. Let us try unplugging the battery like so and then let us try plugging it back in again without the battery. LED's on the button board. What I'm thinking of here is the battery causing the damage. The problem is elsewhere. I think the only next plausible step is to remove the main board. I really don't want to do that. I need to get at the two screws. Once here, if it isn't too bad, remove that. The other one is here. No, that's okay. I just have to pry between some of the wires which are all glued down with potting compound. Does that actually achieve anything? You know, looking at this, this circular cage, the chassis, is not actually designed to open at all. It is just a tube. So I am not convinced this is moving. I'm not convinced that the speaker is attached to the cage at all. Sorry, how do I put this? I am not convinced that the speakers are screwed to a removable chassis. I think they're screwed to the main circular chassis and therefore they won't come out, at least not in a unit. I think the thing I've just done the screws for is a removable piece to allow the speakers to come out. But it's quite obviously that was assembled then all these wires were gummed into place. So I don't think that is going to help at all removing that because I'm just going to have to strip the wires off. The wires connect all these LED strips. So let's just do that one back up again. This screwdriver is not magnetic. It should be. All screwdrivers should be magnetic. Okay, this is looking increasingly like this is just unfixable. I don't know what's wrong with it. But if it was dropped, that could have broken something on the motherboard. The fact that it's not doing anything when powering on is suggestive, but I don't know what of. So these speakers, how did they get them in? Because the white piece here that the speaker cables are connected to protrudes outside the socket for the speakers. The same applies here. So now the speaker moves a little. I don't understand how they got that in unless it went in different way around and then got rotated, which is possible. No, it's square. So these are the LED strips that make the thing light up. These are sealed units. They're covered in some silicone stuff and they're just glued down. So these were obviously attached, including their wiring loom after the rest of the thing was assembled. Yeah, in order to disassemble it, I'm going to have to remove all the LED wiring loom, which is both theoretically possible. It's all glued down. I can see the wires here going through the plastic and coming out here. Okay. That wasn't so bad. What's going on here then? There's screws in the middle, which I hadn't seen before. So let's get those out. Okay, that's actually coming. So let's remove these ones again. All right, well, that wasn't actually so bad. Oh, look, here's a hole through the middle of the board, complete with some waterproof stuff that's never going to go back on again. Yep, there's definitely a PCB in there. Okay, so let's undo one of these speakers and speak of just if that lifts out, all my worry was for nothing. Okay, that makes the board seem rather easier to work. Let's unplug this with difficulty. Don't see any damage of any kind. I suspect that what's wrong with this is so subtle that I will have no chance of finding it. Never mind. It was a long shot. Okay, this one is having more difficulties being removed. And as I actually thought, it is because the speaker connector is hitting the plastic chassis. There we go. Unplug. All right. So now we have a PCB, which is very hot glued in. You can see the hot glue here with no readily apparent cracks or anything. Now, that is interesting, however. Here it says MCU update and there's a row of test pads. This will be for reflashing the board. So it's theoretically reprogrammable. You probably couldn't because the chip will be locked down. Oh, what's this? What is this? This is a four megahertz crystal with a broken leg. That is what's killing the board. Fantastic. All it needs is a new crystal and a lot of reassembly. And this thing could be up and running again. But to do that, I've got to get the bloody board out, which is hot glued in. And if I thought getting this off was bad, getting the board out is going to be so much worse. I might be able to solder on a new crystal without removing the board. It needs a crystal and legs. I think there's enough space inside here for one. I don't have a four megahertz crystal. I'm not entirely sure what kind of crystal it needs because there are several varieties. Let's just reassemble this thing just so that pieces don't get lost because it is now theoretically repairable. The fault is big and obvious and I suspect even my soldering skills are up to that. Just... But you know what? Just being able to reassemble this thing is going to be a challenge. I'm not going to bother plugging in the plugs. They're just too horribly fiddly and it's not going to be worth anything unless I can replace the crystals. It's not worth the effort. Short camera break. The reason for the pause was my camera will only record half an hour of video at a time or less if it gets into a snip which is why I lost footage at the beginning of this. In terms of if this is irrecoverable what could I do with it? Well, the LED strips will be interesting because they are typically driven by a really simple bit bangable protocol a bit like I2C but different. And these are probably just off-the-shelf strips so I can probably just wire them up to something to make them go and each LED is likely to be individually addressable and we've actually got a decent number here all nicely wired together into a grid because this thing was supposed to play pretty patterns on the outside so we could very easily remove these attach it to a cheap and nasty Arduino clone and, you know, make a LED grid. That would be cool. The battery is definitely worth having. That's a nice battery. See how it works it doesn't catch fire or anything. This is to tuck in under the LED grid. It's all gummed together with gum. Nothing goes in well. Luckily the black goop they're using for waterproofing is so staining that I can tell which end was which. There we go. There's probably a number of interestingly interesting components I can pull off the thing. The most interesting bit is the processor but it's probably not hackable. There's in here some of these LED strips down to stop them flapping about. There goes there. These ones I pulled the styrene off. So the screws go on. And of course I have forgotten about the two screws in the middle because you always forget about screws. See this one comes off again. And the blessed designers of this thing actually use all the same size of these little screws. So I don't need to worry too much about which ones go where. Where the few minor exceptions. Now I'm an idiot. That's my dough. Before I do that let's just check to ensure it's pulled all the way down. So much easier. Right now this can go down. Stick it together. And the vast amounts of gum they've used will make it actually stay down even though I've pulled it off. So there is a possibility that now I've cut through the light sensor. It won't work at all. It depends how the software is written. If it tries to talk to the light sensor which will be an intelligent device with its own accord. If it doesn't get a response it may just you know give up. But it probably won't. That kind of behaviour is pretty unusual. Okay. Battery cover. So this wire goes through. It should just push down and clip on. Yeah I think that's it. So it's another four of these screws. Actually hang on. It's not about that. So the chassis pushes on like this. So these two screws are covered. So I have to put those on now. You know I've had just had a thought. Which is this thing does not have a woofer. It's got the big these things look like woofer base reflex ports. Wrong one. But they're not. All they do is connect to the interior space. Which is just the back of these two speakers. So in fact all this thing has are these two little speakers. So any base that this thing is emitting will be completely simulated by two speakers that can't do base. So if I ever get this working it will be interesting to hear what it sounds like. And that's a different type of screw. That is in fact the right screw for here. Because I can see the countersink. This one needs to come out. What's next? Let's stick these things back on. They've got the rubber reflex domes. These are actually metal. Interesting. And their purpose will be entirely to make the thing look cool. It's no longer airtight. Not quite sure of the hole we're here. Okay. So what pieces have we got here? We've got the cage. But the next thing will be this. And I need to get this wire for the button bar. Through the appropriate hole. That's going to be awful. How does that supposed to work? I'll push that through here. Okay, that's actually also bad. Alright. So this is held on by some of these screws. But in addition the button bar and the plastic cover for the button bar also held on. So let's plug that in. That goes snugly on here. Where did I put the plastic top? So here is the defunct light sensor. This right. This will cover up these two screws. Let's put those in. This will just push on here. Held in place by all the goop. We've got these little screws. Let's hold the thing down. This came from IKEA. It's surprisingly good. And wasn't very expensive for Switzerland. Okay, that one is less happy. So we now have these screws here. These screwdriver bits are magnetic but not very. Okay, now is it airtight? No. I'm not really surprised given what I've done to the all the various glue seals. Now this just wraps around here. Let's leave this way around. But it's not actually going to stick down because it wasn't stuck on with that kind of glue. This goes on here. Now the hooks I didn't bend on this side. So let's try that again. Actually tell you what, I'll do this properly. Be right back. Double sided sticky tape. Best stuff ever. Double sided sticky tape because it doesn't have the peeler way backing which means it's the outside of the reel is sticky. And gets covered in lint and air and horrible stuff like that. The stuff I'm used to has a the outside is smooth plastic. You stick it on and then you peel off the smooth plastic and then you end up with a sticky surface. It works much better because of course now I know how it works. I don't need to take this stuff off again. So finally end of the tape. This on here. This yeah except you know I like it to be straight. Now that will stay on. Now the metal cage. The hooks I didn't bend on this end. So replace the thing in the cage like this. Push it down to the hooks engage and I can see the little plastic indentations where the hooks go. I'm not going to bend these back again because then when I take this apart in the future that will just be terrible. So that's now we just need to make these hooks engage. So that ain't right. On this side. Let me apply a little persuasion to these hooks. Harder than I thought it was going to be to be honest. I could have just clipped nicely back on but it didn't. This side's not clipped on properly either. I'm going to have to do this differently. So now we insert the tube in like this. Now the hooks should now neatly drop into place but they ain't. That is very weird. I don't understand why that's not working. That's a little bit better. Great. Now the hooks are snapped. I'm going to have to bulge this. Let's go back to the original plan. And these two hooks drop in here. That's better. The mat is in fact not on quite right. It's not helping. The hooks in fact need to bend backwards to go into these stupid slots. For one reason I'm having all the trouble. What do I have the cage on backwards? I think I've got the cage on backwards. Okay. Under it one last time. I was about to say that now that I know how the thing comes apart I was quite impressed. But I'm not anymore. This cage is terrible. Okay. That I think is better. I think cage is not symmetrical. And I was putting it on the wrong way round. And that's why it just wasn't working. Now however it's just been perverse. Okay well I think that's as good as I'm going to get. That's dreadful. Okay. Right. The next bit is the I've done the chassis. The next bit is this bit. But I need to do I need to put some screws on first? The silver ones and the black ones. The black ones. I don't remember how this thing went on now. Oh yeah I get it. The black ones held these caps on. And the silver ones held these caps on. So this bit just pushes on. Doesn't really want to push on but it should push on. That was the bone. Which it turns out needs to go on on the outside. That was what was stopping the end cap go on. I just managed to catapult it across the room. That's better. Okay. And now this side goes on here. Like so. And it turns out that the chassis the cage is not on right? That's just wrong. Never mind. And the bung. That was in here. And the black ones go. Yep now they work. I need a proper screwdriver. What's happening is the tip is too wide and it's scraping against the shell. Which is not good. Okay that's all one end. Look at that cage. That's just not right. The buttons feel like they work though. Which is a good thing. Yeah. I think it's probably possible to repair this. Next time I do an electronics order I will get a sticker 4 megahertz crystal in because they're not expensive and it's worth a try. I'm interested to know if it actually works. It's never going to be good as new because I had to break it to get the thing open. And some of the pieces such as this stupid cage the metal is really brittle which is the catchers are just not bending without snapping. So I don't really think that's good. That's a plausible repair. To be honest if I was going to use this myself I would probably just not bother with the cage and leave it as the white for I mean cheap and nasty but that goes on here. It screws the power ability wise. It's a pain to get into the wrong screwdriver. Let's try this again. It's a pain to get into but you can actually get into it. And you don't have to smash bits apart from the cage. The bit broke which was the color sensor. If I had done the right thing you could get that off without damage although that would have been gruesome because you have to pull the ribbon connector through the black goop. So you'd end up having to pry the black goop out of the slot in the chassis that the cable goes through in order to get the cable out and it probably end up fouled with that tarry stuff. So if you open this thing it is never going to be waterproof again even if it was waterproof to begin with. That's not straight. Never mind. But on the whole it's not bad. Audio quality wise to get decent audio you need big speakers that does not have a big speaker. This is cheating. There's a screw there I didn't put in. Screw hiding. I mean these things work by using psychological audio tricks to make it sound like it's good even though it's not by amplification and digital signal processing to enhance different bits of the sound. But if you compare these speakers with a proper set of dumb speakers that just replay waveforms there is no comparison. That's right. Something wrong there. And this goes on. See this doesn't have a nice locating piece. If it doesn't work there's bits I can use to scavenge. And I do wonder do wonder what I can do with that battery. The obvious thing is to turn this into a power bank as some description which wouldn't be particularly difficult. You've got to be careful with high power power banks because you know setting fire to your battery is not really the best thing to do. Most batteries have onboard protection circuitry a little PCB so they're pretty straightforward to work with. Others don't. You really have to be sure which one you've got and what you're doing. But that's a nice form factor and it's got an actual socket and stuff so it might be worth experimenting with. You then use sorry, you can use off the shelf buck regulators and voltage converter units so very little to actually do. I might need to actually go and buy a battery controller and charge circuit. I have a 12V solar panel so it might be cool to turn the thing into a rechargeable solar battery. This is where I pride the rubber band and it's not good. So that pushes on there more or less. Yeah, this band has stretched. That's not going to be the same again. Really it needs some glue and probably a new band which won't be able to get. Okay, well yeah, that'll do. As good as new sort of. Yeah, this will go in a drunk drawer until I do my next electronics order then I'll see if I have a go at actually making it go. I'll just scrounge up a new clock crystal clock crystal even. Four megahertz. I have no idea if it's the right kind but it is at least the right shape as the one on the motherboard. So let's try installing it and see what happens. So it's now actually a couple of months after I did the rest of the video because it took me a while to realize that these clock crystals were easy to find. So it's actually been a little while and I am not entirely certain I remember how this thing went together again. I don't really want to try and rip the thing apart that I did last time. So yeah, I need to take the end caps off first. So find an appropriate screwdriver. Got one somewhere. This one worked. No it didn't. As always it's a flat head screwdriver. It would be entirely the wrong thing for this. I'll be very interested to know if I can actually replace the crystal and whether this thing will actually work once I've done it. It seems plausible. The crystal cost about 20 cents. So it's worth a try. That in comes off. So getting it open last time has actually beaten it up quite considerably. I think unavoidably it's just it comes apart but it's not really designed to and we did have to cut off one component which is the light sensor. If I remember correctly it's not these. These do something else. I can't remember how this works at all. But I know that this comes off. So let us carefully unclip these. These hooks are incredibly brittle. This mesh grill does not come off. So it's possible that taking the thing off and putting it back on again twice is just too much for it. And I haven't been able to bend it properly back into shape. So we'll see. As I say it's considerably beaten up once. Opening it again should make it a bit less beaten up. But it's never going to be the same again. It may just be it's supposed to unhook. It may just be that the grill will be right off. So there's a hook. There's a couple of hooks here on this side. The ones on this end are snapped. The ones on this end haven't. That's not actually coming out of place. Okay I think I'm doing this in the wrong order. Let's remove the end caps again. This will be what I did last time. I mean I could just review my old footage but now it takes the fun out of it. So what I found out was the clock crystal on the mother board had snapped off. But any other obvious signs of damage. I know it's been dropped. So it does make sense that the clock crystal just broke off from the impact. And that would mean that the CPU wouldn't run and you know just nothing would work. Which is exactly the behaviour I'm seeing out of it. If all the LEDs are software controlled and there's no like hardwired power LED okay that ain't working. Did I do? This thing peels off. That's how it works. I do need to take the end cap off this side. Yeah if there are no hardwired power LEDs they're not having the CPU running means that nothing will light up. That isn't that one I'm seeing. Still the wrong screwdriver. I have another cross head screwdriver somewhere. Okay let's try this. It's still not working very well. Yeah I remember this from last time. I don't think these are the standard cross headed angle. So posi drive and philip screws have different angles in the screwdriver tip. And it's important to get the right one because if you use the wrong angle it puts a lot of strain on the wrong bit of the screw and instead of making a nice clean physical contact and spreading the torque you put a lot of stress into one part of the screw and you can like shear. You can gouge out the inside of the screw so there is no cross in it anymore and then you're stuffed. And I have a bit of a feeling that these screws use non-standard angles. Weird. This is another small flat headed one doing a much better job. Okay. That comes off and goes away safely. Right. And the grille has in fact now come loose. We put that away safely. And we pull off the fluffy stuff and that also gets stuffed away. And we pull off the drums. So I now have access to the board but I do not have access to the clock crystal so I need to do further dismantling so most screws should lift off should just leave it off. There's quite a lot of gum holding things down so there we go. It doesn't want to come off. So I remember from last time what I need to do is take this plastic grille off. It gives me access to the speakers and I can remove the speakers and then through the hole in the speaker I have access to the actual clock. How did this work? It doesn't mean that long. Oh! It slides Does it slide out? This strip lifts off because here is the light sensor which is now wrecked. I need a pokey tool That's not right. Why is that not working? Gummed down? Yeah, it's just gummed down. So that takes the this is never going to be waterproof again. So that gives me access to the actual PCB which now lifts off. I do the clamp and it's out. And now I undo these screws and the inner piece just slides out from the plastic shell. I'm just getting what needs to be tucked down there. Then you stash that somewhere. Right, the next bit is to remove the bloody LED strips. Now I took some of the foam off which is going to stuck on and won't come off again. Now these are just stuck down. They are just stuck down. And there are some screws underneath them so we don't have to lift them off. So we gently pry them off. I think that one hasn't actually come off. Maybe you don't need to take them all off. I'd rather forgotten. Yeah, here we go. I think there's a couple of screws down here but I think we can get away without those. But that's something we need. I have to remove the entire white plastic shell to get access to these speakers. I'm going to have to be reaching through the aperture where the speakers went with the soldering iron and trying to avoid melting any parts of the case. Which will be exciting. Just making sure I haven't lost the clock crystal. The battery is under this bit. Here we go. And here we have access or rather awkward access to the speakers. I think there's a magnet in there. I thought there'd be a magnet inside a loudspeaker. I think this is the right one. Oh yeah, I can see the clock crystal it's under here. So we can avoid having to dismantle the other one. And I remember that I didn't actually do the plugs up. So this should just lift out right now. What have we got? It says C4 That's it there. C4000M Let me do the zoom thing. One day I will turn the zoom dial in the right direction. So this has actually come loose on one side. Box crystals are symmetrical. So the next stage is to get it off. Now normally you would get to the underside of the board and desolder it. But this board is well and truly glued in. So I'm not going to bother. I'm just going to rip it off the board. So here are my trusty angle nose pliers. You can't see a thing doing that. Let's try this. There we go. Using metal fatigue to bust the pins. I'm hoping there'll be enough wire sticking out to pull off. Yeah, I'm mostly looking at the camera screen doing this. It gives us a rather better view. It rotates really easily. But it's not actually coming off the board. So I wonder whether the crystal is actually snapped inside. Focus Focus Right. So you can see there's actually a bit of wire sticking out which is into the board. Which is going to make soldering a new one on interestingly. What I was going to do where did I put my tweezers? Yeah. What I was going to do was just try and put two big blobs of solder on the board. One there. And one there. And these will make electrical contact. And then I would simply float this in the air with the two legs sticking into the blobs of solder. Rather than having to you know do it properly. I don't have access to the bottom of the board. But that's not going to work so I have to apply the soldering iron on this side of the board. Possible by just applying heat to the legs like this I can melt the solder on the bottom of the board and push the wires out the bottom. Let's try I suppose. So the first thing to do is to tin the clock crystal legs. So I have a clock crystal with two blobs of solder on each side. Now I need to get access to the board of the soldering iron. That's going to have to be through here due to you know lots of plastic being in the way. So I'm going to have to hold the crystal with my tweezers like this. And yes it is super awkward. That's done it. I have no idea if it's made electrical connection underneath. It feels robust. Let's try the same on the other side. This one's easier without burning myself hopefully. This one's easier because there's some wires sitting at the top so I just actually need to just melt the solder. Okay, well that seems to have done a thing. Okay, what is next for testing? I need to plug the battery in. Before I do anything else I'm actually going to I have to take this speaker out in order to plug it back in. No idea if this will work. It would be awesome if it did. So this is like the limit of my ability to repair things. If this doesn't work I'm at basically out of options. Okay, on so much blue. Okay, now this I need to get the back in. The speaker back in. It doesn't really want to go. I think I've got it the wrong way around. I think it's got to be this way. I'm dropping into place. There it is. Right, awesome. And we do have the screws. Once this is done, we'll try it and see. And yeah, fitting about the speaker here. I am, partly I think I may get like a startup noise which I'd like to hear. But also, I'm kind of putting off the bread for a moment. Oh, I should probably also plug in the control panel. Okay, now where is the control panel actually goes on this side of the board. So it's not so brilliant. It wants to be this way up, you see. Goop is disgusting. All right, so we have here a USB cable and it is now time for the moment of truth. That could be a longer USB cable. I'll get a longer USB cable. Of course, you probably know whether it works because it will say so in the YouTube description. But I don't. Right, well, that's nothing happened so far. I would expect to see a chart. Oh, we've got a light. We have an actual light. My God. That looks like it's actually working. Let's try the on button. Oh, it works. How awesome is that? Right. I don't know whether these microphone picked it up, but let's try a thing. Right, pair new device. The L-pulse 2. Right, now what music can I play that will both work properly in mono and not get me a copyright strike? YouTube Music Library. I don't think that has done the one I wanted. How awesome is that? I actually did something which worked. Now I need to put it back together again and not break it. Yeah. Particularly as it is live, the battery is like working. I need to start dismantling it now. So, let's try it off. Right, first step. Now, there is actually a little bit of an issue which is the clock crystal is standing proud of the board and I'm pretty sure that the loudspeaker is going to hit it. So, I probably need to bend it over sideways. There's actually quite a lot of space in here. Bend, bend, bend, bend. Okay, that should do. Plug this in. Reach the plug from this side. I don't need my soldering iron anymore. These corner needle nose pliers are the most awesome thing. They are so useful. So much like easier to reach things than a straight pair. Of course, there is also the minor aspect that I bashed about so much it looks like trash. I will admit that I would be tempted to try and fit it into another box. All the pieces will easily come out and they're all one plugs. So, if I was willing to take a hacksaw to it. Now, it's not actually mine. I was given it as, you know, this doesn't work. Do what you like with it. It would be awesome if you could repair it. And as I have made it work, assuming it still works by the time I finish the video, I will try and hunt it back to them. But there's nothing here particularly complex electrically. The clock crystal that I've actually put in this thing cost me twenty cents. That's twenty Swiss cents. Point two of a Swiss franc. Now, if I were to convert that into, for example, euros, then what you get is twenty cents. And likewise in dollars it's approximately twenty cents. Which is kind of convenient. It's interesting that this thing costs like 200 francs new. It's not a cheap piece of kit. And that one piece, that one component turned it from working into complete trash. There's no repair service for something like this. Now, I'm aware that I've spent a number of hours learning how this thing works and dismantling it. So, my labour cost is very high, but the actual parts cost is twenty cents. It's rather a shame to discard a perfectly repairable piece of technology just because it's broken. There must be a better way to handle things. I'm glad I have actually been able to make it work. I mean, the light centre no longer works, and given how much I've been chewing up the microphone last time trying to get the thing open, I'd be kind of surprised if that works as well, to be honest, but it sounds like the speakers work. So much of this is glued together. There's a gum everywhere. It's disgusting. Okay. So, the next stage is to slide the shell on. Which goes on this way. Oh, and remember this. This theme is exciting. This has to go on this way. Oh, that's unpleasantly folded. There's a bit here. I don't want that to... This hopefully should be the last time I take the thing apart, so I don't really want to break it now. Okay, so that slides in and that kind of goes down. This goes in like this and the clamp does up. I love these little connectors into place neatly. Let's actually just fire her up again. That's a lot louder. Now it's got both speakers attached. Right, that works. Oh, what does this do? Now that's the light colour. There's supposed to be LED strips all up. Well, this bit goes on. I'm very glad that the light sensor turned out to be optional. Kind of a stupid waste of time anyway, but I think that screws stripped. I now need to insert the drums. I don't believe they had any orientation of this. The gum here has seen better days, too. That's not one straight. Stick to everything except what I wanted to stick to. This drum... Okay. It's not airtight anymore, nothing like previously. You'd push the drum on one side and the other would pop out good and firmly, but it's not doing that. Right. So the next thing is the fluffy stuff. But given how terrible the shell looks, now I've bent it about, I wonder whether it might look better with just straight plastic. So let's just try sticking this on and seeing how it looks. And to be honest, not so hot. It's also, yeah, that's not great. It's also sticky. Which is also not so great. Huh. There's a lot more bass now as well. I have no idea. That was shuffled. Yeah. I'm not sure whether the power down button, the volume down button is working. So I had put this on it. Which just sticks onto the goop. But it's also, this is not great either. I would be slightly inclined to put it in the new box for a start. But clean the goop of the plastic shell and try and make it a bit presentable. Like painting it black. But let's try and put the cage back on, I think. Do I want to try and put the fuzzy felt on it? Just like it's got the adhesive this side. Oh, I remember. I put a double-sided sticky tape down to hold it in place. Which is now not at all sticky. Not very good double-sided sticky tape. It doesn't need to be particularly good just as long as it holds it in place enough to get the cage on. I also remember the cage as being a right nightmare to put on. So this thing is the badge which goes here. So this slides on. Which side has got hooks that work. This side has the hooks that work. So this goes in like this. And you hook into place. And you get the nightmare of getting this thing into place. Straighten these hooks and down the slots. That's actually clicked into place. Just further. That hook's actually bent in the wrong place. That's better. That feels reasonably robust actually. This side's not good. Do I need more bending? Okay, that actually wasn't so bad. And it doesn't look... I mean, it's all slack and horrible. But that's not so... not as bad as I was dreading. So let's get this thing on again and see how it looks. It goes on there. That stretches. This thing goes through the hole. That ain't so bad. Something breaks. The last one on this side. And you can already put the bung in or the water will get out. That's more airtight now. Who would have thought? Four screws on the other side. You know, the clock crystal down there probably still looks fine. If you could somehow, you know, connect it up. All it really needed was to be bent back into place and the broken leg resoldered. If you could somehow reach inside the PCB to where the leg was snapped. Under the clock crystal. Alright, now this... which then's got the microphone that pressed into place. So there's a... just a few gaps there. So I would have thought that doing up these screws would, of course, the end caps pop into... Now that's actually all the way up to the end. So maybe something else is wrong. So I'm going to take this off and have a look. It's all dead and done. So this needs to... going... Okay, good enough. Possibly it's just it's been sufficiently wrenched about. Yeah, there's horrible gouging here around where the microphone was because I didn't realise it was a microphone. I thought it was a clip. Yeah, I was on holiday Christmas and the bed and breakfast I was staying in had a Bluetooth speaker playing horrible Christmas music in the lounge and I connected to it remotely with my phone and I played a bit of a track that I actually wanted here because there's no security on it or anything and there's... I didn't even have to get up and go over to it but then... What's up in here? Now that's the bum. It's got caught underneath it. Yeah, I'm not going to worry about that. So it's got caught underneath this rubber thing. However, it's going to be hidden under the shroud so I'm not going to do anything about that. This one's got the button on it so it goes on this side so this one must go here. Where are the screws? Yeah, I played a bit of a track and decided I'd probably better stop filling with it to disconnect it. At which point the Bluetooth device stopped working and it took the concerted effort of the two staff like half an hour to make it work again with me looking very embarrassed in the corner. Luckily I was the only customer. Bluetooth is dreadful. And my father's car has Bluetooth and I can connect to it from my phone and I can play music on it and it plays fine for 5 to 10 seconds and then the pitch of the music slowly slides down I think exactly one tone and then it continues playing fine which is an incredibly special bug I have no idea how they managed to make it do that. Where are the screw holes? Ah right, I was trying to find the button to make the lights light up but of course it's the one just here. I'll try that one out in a moment. I can't remember what those are for. They'll be for the plastic cage on the inside. Oh well, I'm not taking it apart now. Feels like that one's stripped. Right, now these things go on. This one has a rubber groove for the button housing here so this one must go at this end. And also I think that in the several weeks I did the first part of the video they are a little less stretched so they've actually gone in. And this one there is still no way to get the positioning right. There are these little holes that match the screws. Let's try that one there. No, that's not right. Because this plastic piece is also irregular. Right? And it goes in one way around. Oh wait a minute, this goes here. Brilliant. That wasn't so done after all. And there we have it. I think it is now finished. Let's plug it in and see if it still works. Bluetooth connection. Let's try the button. Let's try playing something quiet. Lucky rubber ducky. Button does nothing. Maybe I've just managed to break the LEDs. If the light sensor here actually fails in the wrong way, maybe it's just confused. But that seems unlikely. Orange mean. That seems weird to be honest. This is changing the colour. I think it is also possible that I managed to damage the wiring loom for the LEDs. Well the volume works. I'm going to call that good enough. I don't know how the rest of the LEDs work. Maybe the owner will know. But the owner actually wanted it to play music on so I'm going to call that done. Preparing the wiring loom probably isn't difficult. It's just wires. That's good. I'm going to leave this to charge for a while. Anyway tear down and successful repair of a JBL thing. I did figure out the model that's in the first half of the video. But that's been too long ago for me to remember it. Stand upright dammit. Well I do the outro. Come on. Yeah. It wants to get away. There you have it. It's done. I hope you enjoyed this video. Tell me what you think of my incompetence in the comments.