Hardware SP Speaker

[LHerz]

I have what I believe to be a water damaged SP that charges & works great. Only thing is the audio works sometimes & works indefinitly when the volume switch is applied with pressure. Any Ideas what it could be? Thanks

 

[FAST6191]

Does it work if you hold it upside down? We have seen a few things do that.

Anyway if forced all the way up it works. My first choices would be to look to the slide that the thing runs on -- either a cold/dodgy joint and forcing it makes better connection, or, more likely, there is some nastiness inside the slider and forcing it either reduces the resistance enough to work or gets it to a point where the junk has not built up enough to trouble it.

The solution for the former is reflow the solder joints. The solution for the latter is get some contact cleaner (proper electrical, don't use automotive contact cleaner as it is usually far too vicious), squirt some inside the slider and run it back and forth a whole bunch of times. This will hopefully get rid of any junk in there and allow it to make better connections -- any number of slide resistors I have fixed this way for audio and video equipment over the years.
If it is water damaged then it could also be a point right at the top (few used it elsewhere) was the only point in contact during the event so was spared corrosion or slime, unless you meant pressure as in pushing into the SP and not pushing it right up and holding in which case I am back to the build up of nastiness as that will mechanically go through it.

You can try sliding the switch back and forth a whole bunch of times, same idea as putting and taking a cartridge in and out a bunch of times when you have connection issues, but you really do want something in there to try to clean it as that fix usually only very temporary. If you look online and see contact cleaner is ridiculously expensive (it often is for what is little more than a can of solvent) then know it is also the sort of thing electronics repair shops go through by the case. If you want to disassemble your SP to the point where it just needs a squirt then do that and wander into one. From there you can hopefully just get away with buying them a chocolate bar or something.