My young niece has an iPod touch that has been working fine for her, but recently the headphone jack has become unreliable, and she can’t listen through headphones. One or both channels keep cutting out.
Apple appears to have done a good job with the headphone jack on the touch, even using gold plated contacts. However this unit has done very hard service with continuous use by kids and probably cats and dogs, too, and the jack is just worn out.
Typically, any repair of a modern electronic device like the iPod costs almost as much as a new one. So what to do?
One could buy and use a wireless Bluetooth stereo headset. It’s a neat idea, and her iPod is one of the models that supports it. But they are kind of expensive, and we’re on a kid’s budget here.
How about the dock connector? Is there some way to get audio out of that? Turns out there is.
I found an inexpensive product to do just that. However with the dock-connector solution, you don’t get volume control, so you need some way to adjust the volume. So here’s the complete solution, in two budget products.
Dock-to-Female Headphone Jack Connector
Volume Control
This entire deal costs $12.50 before shipping and tax. The local Radio shack had the volume control cable, but the other connector had to be ordered. The dock connector is an especially great deal for $3.51, and could be useful for connecting iPods and iPhones to various components.
The volume control is even smaller than it looks, so the whole setup won’t be too unwieldy.
Update: The dock connector has been received, and all is working great! Note: the photos above are links to the sites selling the products.
-Jamie
hi,
I’m planning to get this to replace a faulty headphone jack – I’ve been reading some reviews and some say that it isn’t supported on version 3.1.2 and you cannot play videos with it. has that been your experience? any info would be helpful, thanks.