Mono output from 3.5 mm jack

I haven't been playing my AES for a year or two. Yesterday I wanted to play a little with my son. Somehow only one of my speakers had an output, the other only had static. I use one of those SCART cables with headphone jack to get stereo output from the AES. This has worked flawlessly before. I plugged out the cable from the 3.5 mm plug and plugged in a pair of headphones to see if the problem was with the SCART cable or my setup. I still got sound only from one side.

I truly don't understand this. The AES has been stored in my bedroom and no-one has tampered with it. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Any suggestion or advice is highly appreciated. The serial number is in the 110-thousands, and I've done the RGB-fix and installed a UNIBIOS and led-light if any of that matters. Help!

Sounds like a cap has gone out. Try bridging the audio caps near the headphone jack first to find the bad one.

Neo Alec said:

Sounds like a cap has gone out. Try bridging the audio caps near the headphone jack first to find the bad one.

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Thank you for your input! Can you please elaborate on this? I have no technical expertise, I got a professional modder do the abovementioned work. Is this something I can figure out on my own?

It's going to take some troubleshooting and soldering. You may want to send it to someone who does mod work. It could also be as simple as just a broken headphone jack.

Neo Alec said:

It's going to take some troubleshooting and soldering. You may want to send it to someone who does mod work. It could also be as simple as just a broken headphone jack.

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Ok thanks. I just think it's strange this can happen when it's just sitting there on the shelf :/

That's what happens with capacitors, although it's less common with the Neo.

Most of my arcade boards are now missing colors or sound, though they were working when I bought them. I am organizing a project to recap them.

That sucks man. Good luck with your project! And thanks again

Yeah, I'm not super savvy on repairs, but I do know that for stereo audio from a 3.5mm plug, the jack needs to make contact with the three divisions of the plug - the tip, the ring, and the sleeve. If you're only getting mono, it's missing one of the three (OR, like Neo Alec said, a cap has gone bad). You can simulate this by only partially plugging a 3.5mm plug into a jack.