iPod touch iPod touch headphone jack suddenly stopped working!

Bad Jacks

My son bought an iPod 6 months ago. The audio jack was intermittent from the beginning. But he'd fiddle with to get to work, then he tried taping it in place and finally it died entirely. He has now returned it and is hoping for a new replacement.

He bought me one for my birthday 2 weeks ago. It only played on one side (channel) right out of the box. I went to return it to the Mac store but it was out of business - or moved. So now I'll have to send it.

A good friend of the family also had a bad jack and Apple kept replacing the iPod until he got one that worked for more than a couple of months.

A) This is obviously an issue of long standing.

B) Plainly Apple must be aware of the problem which appears to span a number of years.

C) It appears Apple's response to the problem is to just keep replacing the poorly made Chinese units until you get one that will last out the warranty.

Makes me wish they would charge a few bucks more and make it in the U.S.A. . Less hassle and more American jobs.

iTouch Headphone Jack... A Fix?

jstrathern said:

Spoke too soon - my ipod worked fine for a few hours, then crackled and the headphone jack stopped working. I'll try and get an older version of the firmware.

Click to expand...

I had the problem with headphone sound deterioration, which got real bad and drove me to research the problem. I was able to get some decent sound by pulling the jack out a millimeter or so, to find a sweet spot, but it was tricky and would not stay. One can buy replacement jacks, with kits and instructions, but I decided to try some simple things first.

First, I tried the q-tip procedure... scraping most of the cotton off the end, using a little bit of rubbing alcohol and cleaning inserting the thing into the headphone jack. That did not work at all, and There appeared to be some residual cotton from the q-tip left in the jack.

So, I used the tip of a paper clip to root around some at the bottom of the jack and see what I could drag out. Well, the thing was packed with some cotton, but a lot of lint... from a year of carrying the iTouch around in my pants pocket I'm sure. I did try and scrape the contacts on the sides a bit, taking a cue from someone who said they had success using a needle to do that... that would perhaps remove some oxidation.

So, the theory here is that the packed in lint was keeping the jack from bottoming out properly, keeping the contacts from lining up. Others might try this.... it seems benign, but of course YMMV and be careful and do this at your own risk..... I'd do it with the unit OFF, of course., and just take it back to Apple if it's under warranty.

If lint build-up is the problem, maybe Apple needs to think about a means of closing off the opening or something that otherwise seals the earphone jack hole when earphones are not plugged in. An iChampagne cork?

in case anyone still frequents this thread and has this problem, i tried the q-tip method alg123 suggested WITHOUT rubbing alcohol (i only had 70%) and it worked! i followed the rest of the instructions though: take most of the cotton off the q-tip, twirl what's left very tightly, and twist the q-tip into the i-pod in the same direction as you twirled the cotton. do this until it it's all the way in, then twist it back out.

there was a little dirt on the q-tip when i took it out. i'm thinking some dust or something was the cause for the malfunction. so, you might want to try this method WITHOUT rubbing alcohol first, if you're worried about getting things wet in there.

For those having an issue with the headphone jack on their iPod Touch there are a few different fixes you can try. The following webpage has 5 different fixes for the issue listed from easiest to most difficult: http://www.thefakegeek.com/2011/07/headphone-jack-earphones-not-working-on-ipod-touch/

Good luck!

Go to general audio settings and adjust the balance

When i use my iPod touch 3rd gen. 32 gb, my headphones will occasionally stop producing music entirely from both headphones. The music will randomely shut off completely instant from the headphones as if i had either paused it or unplugged the jack, neither which i did. I have used the q-tip to clean it out and also took out the lint from it too. No amount of wiggling the male piece in the jack will fix it either. The ipod shows that it continues to play music without it coming through either speakers or headphones. I noticed that when i unplug and replug the headphones it will work again for a few minutes at a time without pausing it which will mormally occur with unplugging the headphones. I used differant headphones and it still has the problem. Is there anything i can do in order to fix this?
FYI- ipod was bought used over a year ago without this problem, but had a faulty power/lock button which currently does not work. So cannot get it replaced by an Apple store i think.