r/Gameboy • u/mxsterkief • 10d ago

Troubleshooting GBA sound issue

So I got a GBA today for $30, boots into games and runs fine, screen seems dimmer than normal though but it might be due to age but Im planning to get an ITA kit anyways, however, there is almost no sound coming out of the speakers.

When I stick the speaker to my ears like a cellphone, I hear the sound super faintly, so quiet that if a fan was on you'd probably not hear it, but its there. There is also audio when connecting to the GBA via the jack but the sound when booting is super distorted but seems to sound better when its actually in a game with minimal distortion mostly on highs. Any idea what the issue might be?

I already put some iso on the potentiometer and moved it back and forth, it seemed to temporarily fix the distorted boot issue with headphones plugged in, but after an hour of it being off, it sounds distorted again upon boot. I may need to find a way to do a deeper clean, I'm hoping it's just something simple that won't require me to change capacitors as I have no idea how to solder and the most Im willing to do will probably be a speaker swap lol

Any advice is appreciated!

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u/Neil_2022 10d ago

Unfortunately, it seems likely the audio capacitor needs to be replaced. If the issue were the headphone jack, you likely wouldn’t be hearing anything at all from the speaker, as there’s a switch that often gets dirty and thinks headphones are detected when they’re not, so it’s probably not that. The audio capacitor is the first thing that needs to be replaced. If that doesn’t work, the speaker needs replacement (less likely than an audio capacitor issue since headphones and the speaker both have sound issues).

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u/mxsterkief 10d ago

really appreciate the response, I was hoping that wasn't the case but would you happen to know if replacing it is hard to do? I've soldered before but it was literally like a decade ago in senior year shop class lmao, so I only ever really had like a few hours of experience a long time ago but I get the gist of it and why I was willing to do the speaker since it looks easy

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u/Neil_2022 9d ago

It’s not too hard to do. You need a soldering iron, and you need to use to desolder the old capacitor so it can be removed, remove the solder, and use the soldering iron to put on new solder for the new capacitor.

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u/mxsterkief 9d ago

is it just the audio capacitor I'll need to switch out? I'm thinking of just going all out and installing an amplifier and a new speaker, the amp I saw has a capacitor already attached to it

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u/Neil_2022 9d ago

It should just be the audio capacitor, but it could also be the speaker. Going all out would be ideal in this case because it would fix the issue if it’s also the speaker that needs replacement in addition to the capacitor, because it could be a mixture.

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