Trs Plug Has End Bitten Off!! Shock Horror., How hard to extract from socket? Options

[Jaysee]

Hi.I 've been off the radar for a bit immersed in manuals and trying to get to grips with all my new kit. I did something yesterday which I managed to avoid in many years of gigging and drunkenly loading/chucking stuff into the back of bedford vans with ne-er a care for its well being.
YesterdayI pulled out a TRS 1/4" balanced eurojack plug from the rear of my Keyboard, it felt a bit stiff so I pulled a bit more firmly, but using gentle normal force, I didn't *yank* it out by the lead or anything. Anyway, when it emerged it had the final metal 'tip' missing, revealing the inner part and a little tuft of worrying wire where the tip should have been; the keyboard wasn't plugged into the mains at the time.

As the tip metal bit is still in there I haven't dared to start it up since this incident for fear of damaging the keyboard by shorting something internally.
Had ayone else had a similar calamity with sockets unwilling or reluctant to release male TRS jackplugs?

Is there any way, of extracting this tip without opening the whole synth ...'fraid I cant even mernd a fuse or wire a plug without risking electrocution, so anything requiring electrical knowhow is a nono
!or is there a special tool to get through the hole to make it surrender its captured 'tip', which must lie beyond the powerful spring designed to ( too powerful in my opinion)part of th socket in question. All my stuff is pretty new so It might slacken ts grip in time. I'm unable to travel out of town to a music store or service center as I'm stuck in a wheelchair. theres now't in Blakpool sadly.
cheers, J.

[kaboombahchuck]

Personally, I'd take the keyboard apart, and extract the anomaly...
If you think the tip is hollow, you might be able to get a screw that will fit the cavity (size it up with the broken end you have). If you can get the screw to get a "bite" on the tip, you just might luck out and be able to extract it. Chances are that the tip has fallen into the keyboard, or has turned, risking shorting out.

[ourmanflinty]

depends what type of jack socket it is..some are enclosed, some are open but with either I'd expect the tip to still be sitting in the end of the socket, any tiny bits may be able to find their way out but nothing bigger than a large crumb or thicker than a washer... You'll need a set of small pointy nose pliers to grap the 'shank' and a tiny screwdiver to poke into the socket and push the jack socket contact 'leaf' or plate out of the way then it should just pull out freely...opening up may be a nightmare, it'llprob be on the other side of a board beneath various other pcb's and entail two hours of stripping out before you even get to it...

[Jaysee]

Thanks for the advice re the missing jack plug tip. I don'treally have the dexterity or electrical knowhow to risk major surgery on such a dear piece of kit as the kurzweil. I have a pretty bad record for taking things to bits with great confidence that I can put them back together again. You know the old story about the awful engineer always having a big tin of orphaned screws and nuts left over from any job? thats me folks:-)
cheers, JC

[Dave Bourke]

In that case, you're going to have to bite the bullet and take the unit in to a repair/service facility. Personally, I wouldn't take any chances with it unless I was certain of my own technical and manual dexterity.

Oh, and maybe think about upgrading your cabling?