Terrible build quality on the headphone jack

My Z1's cue output broke about a month or two after I bought my Z1. As I was then on the other side of the planet from where I bought it, my warranty was effectively void as it would cost more than the unit was worth to have it sent to the UK and back to Asia. I was in the middle of only my third or fourth time playing out with it when the cue output just stopped working mid-set.

A year and a bit later, I've just pulled it out of storage and opened it up to to try and fix it. I thought one of the pins might be broken. As it turned out, all 3 had snapped completely cleanly off the PCB. The socket itself is in a small, recessed section that is supposed to limit how much backward travel the socket has, but poor design means it doesn't work well at all. I've now soldered on a replacement part and added some extra plastric at the back to stop any further travel. Honestly though, it's exceptionally poor design.

In case anyone else has the same problem, the replacement part is a PJ-320F 3.5mm mobile phone socket. If you can't solder it yourself any decent mobile repair place should be able to do the job within about 15 minutes. Cost of the part itself is around about $1.

 

My Z1's cue output was somewhat faulty right out-of-the-box; you have to sort of jostle it a bit to get audio, brand new! Nice mixer aside from that .__.