Taking Apart and Rebuilding My Record Player

This is a small project I took on while I was bored one day, not too much to it but it was fun! The only real goal I had going into this was to fix the right side speaker which stopped working a while back (spoiler alert, it works now). Also got to see the interesting mechanics of my record player which is now rebuilt and ready to use! Sorry in advance if some things I say are… incomprehensible—due to the lack of explanation on my part—but I try to explain in the best way I can!

To fix the speakers, I used the “Silver Conductive 0.2ml Glue Paste for PCB Repair, Electronics Trace & Membrane Switch Restoration” (link if anyone is SUPER interested: https://business.walmart.com/ip/Silver-Conductive-0-2ml-Glue-Paste-for-PCB-Repair-Electronics-Trace-Membrane-Switch-Restoration/16943303597). It’s made specifically for PCB wires, which is the type of wire that my speakers are using.

The easiest way to fix the speakers instead of what I did would be to ‘solder’ the wire to the speaker terminals/pads (where the wires are supposed to connect in order for electricity to properly flow into the speaker). I assume that the wires were initially soldered to the terminals due to the leftover metal on them, but they somehow got disconnected over time. If you don’t know what soldering is, it is the process of heating up filler metal using a specific tool in order to join two other pieces of metal. In this case, not only do I not own a soldering tool, the wires are also far too tiny to solder for an inexperienced person like me (unless I want to create a fire hazard within my dorm).

Anyways, if not explained well in the video, I used the PCB paste to connect the wire (only after I trimmed the plastic covering off with a swiss army knife to reveal the wire). Below is an example image of what the PCB wires look like for some visuals.

photo 1: PCB wiring (this is not my photo nor is this my finger) photo link

As you can see, the actual wiring is extremely small and delicate, however the wires I am working with are slightly smaller than the ones shown above. With the paste, I connected each of the four wires to the four terminals on each speaker. After letting it dry (or at least as much as I could since it never fully dried), I used hot glue to secure the wires so that the wires do not disconnect. I had to layer since the paste I used was not very good for securing, only for electricity transmission. Below is a similar image I found on the web to what the wires looked like connected to the speaker terminals without the hot glue layering. However, the technique here used is soldering whereas I used the PCB paste instead!

Photo 2: wires soldered to terminals photo link

The reason I did not only use hot glue is because it is almost impossible to glue the wires to the terminals without the tiny wires lifting. If the wires are secured in a lifted position, then they aren’t really connected to the terminals. Therefore, the speakers would not work (spoken from personal experience). This was an extremely tedious process, more than I can express, which is part of the reason there is no footage of the process. In all honesty, I also was so focused on gluing and pasting that I forgot to record the important parts… but I hope that my explanation of my process helped you visualize my process!