Playing around inside a JamVox.

I have for some time been using a Vox JamVox connected to an old PC for practice at home.

Audiophiles and tone freaks are probably cringeing at this but to be honest I've found the JamVox to be a really quite useful tool. Given you get the whole thing, along with modelling software focused on 'playing with your heroes' in a box for £100 I reckon it's good value for bedroom guitarists on a budget. The only bit I've found terrible is the use of an external expression pedal. This is massively laggy making the built in wah-wah models almost useless.

Normally I use a pair of Sennheiser wireless headphones with this, but it also serves as a stereo monitor speaker. Pretty much since I got this it's suffered from cutting out when used as a speaker which is annoying.

As I was at a loose end I decided to open the JamVox up and see if I could fix this. My guess was that it had some kind of switched jack socket inside and I wasn't wrong. It's one of those sockets with terminals that break a connection when you push the plug in. Even better one of the contacts was obviously not touching properly so must have deformed slightly, probably from me leaving headphones plugged in for month on end.

Briefly I toyed with desoldering the socket but didn't fancy that and just bent the contact back into shape as best I could in-situ. This was OK for one use but as soon as I put the headphone plug in and out a couple of times the old problem reappeared.

I think I'm going to take the unit apart again and mod it with a switch that does the job of the socket. Given I don't really like messing about plugging and unplugging the base unit for my wireless headphones when I want to use the speakers this will actually suit me.

Assuming this works.