Ibanez Acoustic-Electric Guitar Output Jack Replacement

michael burrell and 2 other contributors

Last updated on January 11, 2018

10 minutes

Moderate

Introduction

When going to plug in your 1/4 in guitar plug, you feel the output jack push into your guitar. This is not an uncommon occurrence for guitar players. Sooner or later something has to give. The wear of everyday use has driven the output jack inside the guitar. Now, we'll have to take the strings off the instrument and go in after the input jack. After we've got the jack, we'll have to secure it to the body, so that it doesn't happen again.

What you need

Tools

magnetic screwdriver flashlight 1 4 mono cable

Step 1 Output Jack

Ibanez Acoustic-Electric Guitar Output Jack Replacement, Output Jack: step 1, image 1 of 1

Where did my output jack go? Don't worry - we'll be back to jamming in no time!

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Step 2

Lets start by gently setting the guitar on a soft surface.
You may hear the rattling of the output jack within the guitar as you do this.

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Step 3

Next, we're going to need to get those strings off of there. So lets start at the 'tuning machines' at the head of the guitar.

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Step 4

Begin turning the tuning machines in whatever order you like. Here, I've started at the low E string. Begin turning it toward yourself to loosen the string up.

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Step 5

Carefully unwind the guitar string from the tuning machine and then repeat this step for the other five strings.
The very ends of the strings can sometimes be pointy and needle like. Also, watch out for strings whipping your hands after the tension is released.

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Step 6

After the strings are released from the tuning machines, you can now release the pegs that hold them into place. These are located at the bottom of the guitar body, just below the sound hole.
put these off to the side in a tray or someplace they won't get lost!

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Step 7

We now have access to the inside of our acoustic-electric guitar.

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Step 8

Using a flashlight, we can have a look around through the sound hole and see what we can find.
Dropping your flashlight onto your guitar body could really do some damage, so be careful.

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Step 9

Tilting the guitar slightly and looking in through the noise whole, we've spotted our misplaced jack.

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Step 10

The angle is too awkward to feed the jack through the whole by hand, but we can guide the jack to the magnetic screw driver and hopefully pull it out through the hole in the guitar body.
Here I've laid my flashlight down to free up my hands and provide some extra light.
You may need to tilt the guitar at an angle that makes the jack move closer to your hand or the screwdriver.

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Step 11

Gently guide the jack through the hole using the magnetic screwdriver.

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Step 12

Feed the output jack into the threaded hole and jack in. You're ready to jam!

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Conclusion

Now that we've fished out the input jack from the guitar body, we can start jamming again. Let's be more careful plugging out 1/4 in cable in from now on.