R8600 No Audio From External Speaker Jack?

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MTScannerNut

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Had a strange glitch yesterday with my R8600 and was wondering if anyone has experienced something similar. I use an external speaker with my radio. I was cleaning my desk so unplugged the radio for several minutes. BTW, the DC power plug on the back is a pain in the butt to remove. Took me some fiddling around to finally figure out how it disconnects. Anyway, when I reconnected the DC power cable I noticed no audio from the external speaker. Not even the beeps you typically hear when pressing buttons. It's like the jack was turned off. I disconnected the speaker cable from the back of the radio and the internal speaker instantly started working. Reconnected the cable and the external speaker started working again.

Any idea what might have happened? Just hoping it's not a sign of a problem that will get worse.
 

kruser

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Try opening the squelch to hear constant white noise from the external speaker.
While doing that, wiggle the external speakers plug around and see if sound cuts out. Then wiggle on just the wire coming out of that plug and listen again.

One or the other may show a defective jack but my guess would be broken wire strands in the wire before it enters the molded plug at the radio.
I've seen some plugs that were simply dirty as well when used at speaker level and rotating them around cleaned them up.
If anything, wipe just the speakers exposed plug with an alcohol wipe but don't spray any type of so called contact cleaners into an 8600!!
 

MTScannerNut

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Thanks for the info.

To clarify, I never disconnected the speaker cable at all. Only the dc power cable. That's what has me baffled as to why no audio when power was reconnected.
 

kruser

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Thanks for the info.

To clarify, I never disconnected the speaker cable at all. Only the dc power cable. That's what has me baffled as to why no audio when power was reconnected.

It's hard to say really.
Knowing you were in back of the radio wrestling the power connector would have also caused the ext speaker cable to move around a bit even though you didn't purposely unplug it.
That's why I suggested the white noise test which will show if you are seeing a dirty plug or bad cable issue that may otherwise go unnoticed.

I got into the habit of re-jacking every cable whenever I worked behind my equipment. You'd be surprised how many become "dirty" after sitting mostly untouched for a length of time!
 
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