More Toolman Moments

*Grunt grunt*

My Guitar Hero World Tour guitar controller stopped working one day because I had left the batteries in for a few months, and they had leaked. After trying to clean the battery terminals with a variety of things (ranging from tissues, cotton buds, nail polish remover, WD-40, etc.) and failing to get it to work, I finally opened it up. What I found, was that the ground wire connected to the battery terminal had been eaten by battery corrosion, and had been disconnected.

Enter my newly purchased soldering iron (my very own cheapy one that takes an eternity to heat up to solder-melting heights).

I cleaned off whatever battery corrosion was left with baking soda (from a cake shop) dissolved in water, and went at the wire clipping, stripping, solder removal, and re-soldering for both live and ground wires to balance it.

So here's the controller all opened up:

Here's a close up of the affected wires, already re-soldered:

So here's the most important part after it's been reassembled:

See the red lights? It works! :D

I can finally have a full band again in Rock Band 2 (at least until I get the keyboard controller for Rock Band 3).

DIY Success

The thing about headphones is, no matter how great sounding they are and how well they're made, they're bound to die on you sooner or later. Such was the case with my faithful Sennheiser PX 100s, which I got for RM 180 about 4 or 5 years back - the sound on one side kept cutting off unless I held the cable in a certain angle. My first thought was: 'Dang - just when I got a replacement pair of foam pads for the ear pieces from e-bay.'

I definitely want these headphones again - nothing can beat the perfect blend of sound, portability, comfort, and value for money that these babies offer. But I don't exactly wanna fork out RM 180 just because one stupid cable is broken inside. So after unsuccessfully looking for someone to repair it for me during my two months in Johor, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

This is the old plug. As you can see, the red wire (right channel) is frayed. The plug is molded and cannot be reused, so I just chopped the whole thing off.

I managed to order a 3.5 mm stereo plug from e-bay for US $0.99 (RM 3.11), but the real challenge was getting my hands on a soldering iron here. Thankfully, I knew someone who knew someone who could lend it to me... eventually. I also had to make my own makeshift clamp using a pair of pliers, some rubber bands, and a cello-tape dispenser.

And here's the finished product, nicely soldered, crimped, and screwed back together with the new plug. Most importantly, it was working 100%. I can't tell you how proud I am of myself, 'cause I'm really lousy with my hands, in general. This is pretty much my first attempt at soldering - it wasn't very pretty, but it worked.

I'm happy. :)