I found an old boom box from the 80s in my father-in-law’s house when cleaning it out this past summer. It was broken then. I don’t know why he kept it, maybe he thought he could fix it. His house was full of stuff like that. He taught me a lot about fixing things myself. I was thinking of that when I made the decision to take the boom box across the country. Maybe I could fix it. It would be nice way to honor his passing, doing something we often did together, fixing stuff. It was one of the many things I packed into a van and drove across the country. Sadly, I could not fix it, so it sat on my workbench for months. I started thinking it would be there when I’m gone too, still broken. I shouldn’t have brought it here. I should just get rid of it.

My kids have a guitar amp from 2010 and it’s not a popular brand. The company is European, it went through a change of ownership since they made this model, and as a result, parts for this vintage are impossible to find. Especially the electronic parts and the specially made plastic bits that go into its construction. It has a socket for a proprietary pedal that stopped working. And they have a gig coming up and just a few days to prepare. I had about 6 hours today to fix it.

When I opened it up, the plastic enclosure that sandwiches the pins into the socket had come apart. Two plastic studs had broken and it no longer held together. Even if I could find a replacement part, it wouldn’t be here in time. Fabricating a replacement housing would require more time that I had as well. Nothing bothers me more that the idea that all these other good working parts would be rendered useless because some tiny little piece of plastic broke. Everything would continue to work if I could just secure the plastic part such that it could withstand the plug being pushed in. Glue would not hold up to that pressure. I kicked around modifying the faceplate to allow for some kind of clamp that would squeeze both parts together against the plate, or some kind of wire twisting, but nothing made sense given the timeframe.

I realized my best bet was to drill out the remained of the plastic studs, (without compromising the space in the socket where the pins go), and use some very unusually long, thin screws, that fit the enclosure without cracking it. Two screws. It sounds simple, but we talking about something just slightly larger than 1/16th of an inch in diameter, at least half an inch long, and with threads that were strong enough to grab the plastic but mild enough that they wouldn’t destroy it. I knew what I needed existed, but it was the kind of thing you find in very finely engineered electronics, not what you find at True Value. I went through all my I-might-need-this-some-day screws and didn’t have anything that would work. I was thinking I might disassemble and old hard drive, but then remembered the boombox. So I started disassembling it in the hopes of finding what I needed. After disassembling most of it, I had about given up. Most of what I found was too thick. What was the right thickness was too short. Or else the threads were too aggressive, or the head was too big. I resigned myself to going to a hardware store in the morning. But I wasn’t confident I’d find what I needed there.

Despite my lack of success, I took the pile and sifted through them again. I found one that I hadn’t initially thought would work and tried it again. It worked! Yet, I still needed one more. So back to the boom box and after removing every last screw from every part of it, I managed to find just one more the right thickness, but it was too long. Fortunately, I also found in there some plastic shafts used as spacers that just so happened to fit this too!

I fixed it! It cost me thing but time.

Had I been able to fix the boombox, we’d have a nice antique sitting on the shelf that no one would have used. It really would have just been a tribute activity to Bill and all he taught me. Instead I fixed something we use, with something he saved, and I think he’d appreciate that more.