Read the legal guidelines on this website and be sure to make yourself aware of the risks of this repair. Warning, this repair requires soldering skills and a basic understanding of electronic circuits.
Step 2
Follow the steps of the guide on how to open an iPod touch 1G until the backplate is removed. Plug a headphone into the headphone jack. If you have a multimeter and a separate headphone plug as shown in the image you can use the diode tester to find out which of the channels is not making contact, usually it is the ground channel (you have sound on both sides but with poor sound quality).
Step 3
Remove the part of the ribbon cable covering the first (ground) contact. This is a destructive step, but you can replace the ribbon cable with a piece of regular wire once the repair is done.
Step 4
Remove the first contact of the headphone plug using a dentist tool or a strong needle as shown in image.
Step 6
This is what the contact looks like once it's removed from the jack.
Step 7
Use the dentist tool or a sharp flathead to widen the contact spring.
Step 9
It should look more or less like this before you reinstall it.
Step 10
Reinsert the contact spring into the jack module and solder a jumper from the contact to the logic board as shown in image (black wire).
Step 11
Use a multimeter to test if the repair was successful or simply insert a pair of headphones and start the music and check if the sound quality is back to normal.
