Ever since we moved into our house the subwoofer output on my Sony receiver has been crappy. It would randomly cut out causing all low frequency sounds to go away. Left with nothing more than a small set of speakers the sound was extremely tinny. To get the sound back I would just wiggle the connection on the receiver or even unplug the cable from the subwoofer and plug it back in. This would some how rejuvenate the connection for just a little while longer. I’ve always thought I knew what the issue was but never took the time to properly fix it. Well this past weekend I said enough was enough.

I pulled my receiver out of the entertainment center, cut the power to it and removed the six screws holding the cover on. The subwoofer port sits on a secondary board in the receiver that is fortunately easily removed. With the RCA cables removed on the outside and a ribbon cable and another connector on the inside there is only the matter of removing four screws. With the screws removed the board comes away from the receiver and I am able to get my first look at the bottom of the board.

It turned out I was right all long, a simple solder joint break.

The fix here is very simple. I got out my trusty soldering iron and heated up the joint and added a slight amount of solder. I don’t have a finished pic but you can look at any of the other solder joints above, that is how it ended up.

I then reversed the above procedure. With the joint soldered correctly the subwoofer doesn’t cut out anymore and in fact, the subwoofer seems sound better than I ever remember it sounding while in the house.