Chosen Solution
The speaker jack from an external computer speaker set snapped off inside the headphone jack of my macbook pro. Apple told me I would need to replace the logic board, which I refuse to do. Tekserve took a look and said they couldn’t help me get the jack out. My attempts to fix it myself I read all the tricks online on how to remove the jack and tried a few of them myself. Most of ’em didn’t help at all. But using a pair of tweezers I was able to get some grip on the jack, though when I pulled it out the force broke the jack into its separate components, and I only extracted a few pieces from the jack – one of the metal rings and two of the plastic parts. The tip-end of the jack is still stuck and deeply wedged in the port. All that said, I’ve given up on manually removing the jack from the outside. Proposal from a local repair shop I brought the computer to a local repair shop. (A few months ago this same shop had repaired the wiring in the speaker cable – the same one that’s jack is now stuck in my macbook pro.) The guy there said he thinks if he removed the logic board he could potentially push the jack out of the port from the inside. If not, he said he could try removing the headphone jack entirely. He’s willing to do to the work for free since the jack itself came from his shop. Now, I’m fine if the work results in the headphone jack being unusable. The goal would be to convince the computer that headphones are no longer in the jack, so I could use the internal speakers again. (I can always buy a usb headphone jack.) My questions My question is, with this model of Macbook is it possible to remove the logic board AND get access to push the jack out of the port from the inside? Or, if that’s not feasible, is it actually possible to remove the headphone jack entirely AND not do damage to the rest of the logic board? ‘Cause neither Apple nor Tekserve mentioned this, and I haven’t found anything along these lines in my online research. I’m pretty desperate here but I also don’t want to risk doing more damage to the computer. Two photos here:
- the jack stuck in the port
- the logic board - the headphone port is where the light brown rectangle is
Yes the board comes out giving access to the port. The port could be de-soldered, and removed or possibly repaired/replaced by an expert. Most headphones jacks have a small hole in the bottom sometimes simply pushing a needle or small wire into the hole can easily push out a broken head phone plug. Removing the jack may affect digital audio as the jack has circuitry to switch digital audio on/off. Is it worth the cost? Only you can determine that. FWIW I would use a USB audio dongle as a work around. Much easier and cheaper… headphones go into the USB port and you can listen to audio that way. Speakers could go into the adapter also. Since USB audio is separate from on-board audio there should be no problem convincing Sound to choose that as your output. If this answer is acceptable please remember to return and mark it accepted.
I’ve just had the same issue and I’ve solved it using a drill. I don’t know the diameter of the drill I’ve used. The tip of the earplug has a diamond shape and the drill is about two thirds of the tip diameter. At low speed carefully drill the neck of the tip trying not to push too hard until the advances little enough to get the drill stuck in the tip, then just pull it out. I got it out at the first try and the speakers are working again. Hope this will help you.
krossave, take a look the schematic on this answer. It does have the part number, description and wiring. Yes you can unsolder it after you remove the logic board. For that, follow this guide. hope this helps, good luck
