EEVblog 1605 - JBL Charge Speaker REPAIR

PART 2 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7sVGnrf0P0

If you run the audio through a fart decoding algorythm, it says "im trapped in a factory, send help!".

Dave's son is laughing his ass off. He has hacked his dad's speaker and inserted a fart noise clip. He disabled it when he saw his dad making a video about it.

It seems very logical to me, it was having gas issues; you opened it up; the gas was released; no more gas to fart out

I believe you have a failing Li-Po battery pack! My friend gave me the same unit to repair, and it also had distorted audio in the lowest bass notes. Loud, bassy music demands the most instantaneous current from the battery. On the power up "jingle", that distorted envelope you see on the captured waveform is a very low frequency "bump" for JBL to show off the impressive bass from this speaker. Lower levels, or high frequency content may not reveal the problem. Suggest: 1. Play loud bass music through the speaker and see if it distorts. Don't use speech. 2. If there is distortion, bypass the battery with a high power bench supply to see if the problem vanishes. 3. If so, replace the battery BTW, there is a service manual available for this unit on the web (unless it was taken down now). Like your channel, hope this helps!

Many moons ago, when I was working doing on-site IT support, we used to get computers misbehaving in strange ways that make no sense. Early Pentium-II era. We'd pick it up from the customer, drive back to the workshop, turn it on, and it would work perfectly. Take it back to the customer - expecting it to misbehave again - but no, works perfectly. The suspicion was microscopic solder cracks, and exposing it to a bit of rough and tumble over poor roads sorted things out. We eventually figured out we can just shut down the PC, pick up the case an inch, drop it, turn it back on, and all is good.

I work in plastic injection mold you can see the parting line so each side of the mold has a profile each mold half is bolted to the press swash plates when those come together 800*f resin is injected resin looks like polypropylene 5150

I love when you do repair videos.

I have a flip 4 that makes weird like you said "fart" noises when I turn the volume up. The battery is busted and i used it with a power bank that I ziptied to the speaker and a USB cable. I wanted to buy a new battery but they are complicated to swap because they have some weird sticky tape on the underside of the battery and taking out the old one is quite destructive. Unless you don't mind pushing it too hard and perforating it (I would rather not). I always assumed that since the battery is busted, at some point when the IC wants to draw current from the battery for the amplifier, the internal resistance of the battery makes it drop voltage and that's what causes the distortion. The noises become worse when the speakers are reproducing bass (thus taking more current to move the coil further for longer) and when the volume is higher, also it seems to work better or worse some days, which I assume has something to do with the ambient temperature and the battery. The other day I was bored and wanted to see how it looked like with the scope, and when the distortion appears the battery drops to 2 or so volts. But I didn't try to fix it or anything, mine is too busted and the plastic has broken down.. etc. those speakers are built very good but they're not meant to last 8 years, specially the battery. They are not built with replacing the battery in mind, either.

Well, I ended up reading about Harold Holt. Fascinating story!

this issue can happen under two factors. the first one is the dead battery but i think that is not the case because this would made two of the speakers crackle at once so I think the second one is what happened here. so the second factor is broken wire which connects the driver voice coil to its terminals, i suppose when on 7:37 they rammed each other this wire maybe under this force pushed itself back into place, but that is just my theory why it repaired itself

So if the signal to the speaker was fine, and what the mic picked up was distorted, my suspicion is something mechanical between the speaker/driver membrane and out through the cabinet. Something loose that shouldn't be loose, or something jammed that should be free - perhaps

The strange noises will be a wire inside vibrating. I’ve rebuild a few of these all with the same common problem. Just simply rebuilding this nearly always cures the wired noises these speakers suffer with. Swelled worn out batteries in these speakers also cause strange distortion noises at high volume.

I can confirm with a similar speaker and a nearly dead battery like other commenters have noted, the "farting" noise is most likely from voltage dropouts. My battery is properly cooked and if I try to use it without a big enough power brick it will make the same noise.

How lucky of me to see your video after i almost quit wanting to repair mine. Same issue + battery swollen and cracked both the battery cover & the case

20:55 "...chasin' fart noises, this is my career." This phrase can be placed on a new Aussie safari uniform! This just shows how easy it is to underestimate the disassembly-reassembly fix when the connector doesn't quite make it metal to metal

Pretty dense looking board layout. Cool overall product design

Dave, probe the battery. Both of mine did the farting, Both are the battery. The "bigger" one I found a replacement, the "smaller" I did not, but it is always plugged so I don't care. Edit: I believe the issue is that one electrode in the lipo crack and can't pass enough current. You touched the battery, so applied mechanical force on it, which may have connected back part of the electrode. My small one (charge2+) work fine for a few minutes then start to fart, then crack, then shutdown. Leave it alone a few minutes, and you can listen back for a while, then it start again. It make me think that the electrode broke and you basically have 2 battery with a "resistor" in between, slowly charging back the "main side".

Suggest checking the passive subs, make sure the metal plate isn't separating from the rubber surround.

A regular small ad in the British satirical magazine Private Eye was for a 'remote-controlled fart machine.' With a little modification, that JBL could be a goldmine!🙂