#49 Joyo ZoMBie, part two - analysis and repair

It took the best part of an evening and a couple hours the next day, but i managed to lift the schematic for the whole preamp board. I also recreated the board, but that was mostly for sanity-checking. I used all the same component designators, but didn't bother measuring all the dozens of small ceramic caps, because there's only SO far i'm willing to go...

#48 JBL Charge 3 Bluetooth speaker teardown

This JBL Charge 3 came in last week in need of a micro-USB (charging) connector replacement. First thing i did was to look up how to take apart the thing, and the good people at iFixit had a comprehensible enough guide.

The connector board is totally separate from the mainboard, so the "repair" part was trivial, and done within minutes. But the more interesting stuff lies deeper inside. Sure, my photography may never get to be quite as pretty as iFixit's, but on the other hand, you're not here (just) for pretty pictures, are you? You're here to see what makes things tick. Or at least that's the curiosity that drives me to take apart stuff like this.

#47 Joyo ZoMBie guitar amplifier teardown

My bandmate got his hands on this Joyo ZoMBie about a week or two back; it was sold as faulty. No idea how or why, but there's something dicky with the tone control - on some power-ups it works fine, but sometimes quits working (ie. sounds like the setting got stuck at some random point along the travel of the knob), no matter how much you twist it. Power cycling sometimes helps, but inconsistently, and even if it does, it just "gives up" again, sooner or later.

#28 Active full-range surround speaker project (BN96-12832 & TPA3118)

Since the "unofficial" theme of this blog seems to be repair, recycling and repurposing (more or less), i finally got around to getting knee-deep into this idea, which i started devising quite a while ago - a pair of "slimline" surround speakers.

Disclaimers:
 - No, these are not meant (or supposed) to be "hi-fi". More just for a bit of "ambient noise", if you will, for movies with 5.1 soundtracks. That, and possibly alternative monitoring for checking mixes.
 - No, these are not meant to go terribly loud. Due to, let's call them, physical constraints, they'll be placed at the corners of my sofa (right up against the wall, opposite the TV and the "mains"), so no huge SPL's are required.