#speaker issues

Have you noticed other issues on top of the garbled speech- like random freezing? If so, I’d go over the usual battery issues: Make sure you’re using new batteries, check that the battery contacts are clean, and make sure the batteries are firmly seated and that the battery door has closed properly.

Furby speakers are pretty fragile, so I’m not surprised the NIB one was mute! Speakers use some ultra-delicate copper wire that’s about as thin as spider’s silk, so you’re not likely to be able to see any damage.

It’s quite likely that her speaker hasn’t completely died yet! Speakers stop working over time because they have some very thin, delicate wires in them that eventually break apart. Your gentle hit probably shifted the broken pieces close enough for the speaker to produce some noise.

You absolutely can get her to speak again by replacing her speaker! My recommendation is always to replace a Furby’s old speaker with a brand-new one, since it will keep working for a very long time. You do need to have the ability and equipment to do some soldering, however.

If you can’t or don’t want to solder, you can also have another Furby donate a speaker. You can check out my previous post for more information on how to do this!

I promise I’ll write a proper guide for both speaker replacing methods some day!

Last week’s project: Testing to see if the method I outlined at the end of this post actually works to reduce a Furby’s speaker volume. It does!

please don’t look too closely at my ugly soldering

This furb is one that @selfindulgentnonsense found in one of our local thrift stores, and the first ‘98 either of us has found locally (or “in the wild”, as they put it)! The original speaker was already starting to wear out, so they opted to have me replace it and graciously allowed me to do some... experimentation.

While I was working on soldering everything onto R10, the left trace decided to fall right off the board, so I had to improvise a little. The left side of the resistor has been soldered a little further down the trace, in a spot that was not originally intended to be soldered to (I had to scrape the green “resist” coating off that part of the circuit board to get electrical contact and let the solder “stick”). This isn’t very mechanically stable, but it should be fine, especially since I coated this entire area of the circuit board liberally in hot glue after taking this picture.

Details on my resistor mod. The original trace fell off because this spot is designed for a surface-mount part, not a comparatively-heavy through-hole part.

I wound up using a 100 ohm resistor on top of the new speaker’s built-in resistance to get a volume that’s just a little quieter than an original Furby’s speaker. New speakers are always substantially louder, even if they have the same specs. This is because the sound quality and volume decreases with age, and the speakers that Furbies left the factory with are not that great to begin with, even by 1998 standards. (New speakers are likely to be louder, retain their volume for longer, produce higher quality sound, and take up less space. Thanks, the forward march of technology!)

Hi! I’m assuming you meant speaker, and yes! Please note that I haven’t done this before and may make some mistakes!

There’s a spot on the Furby’s main circuit board labeled “R10″. It’s right next to the two smaller “daughter” boards and the plug where all of the wires for the speaker and tickle button attach:

It might be coated in hot glue, which you’ll have to GENTLY cut away. Please be extremely careful here; a wrong cut may permanently damage your furb.

You will need to veeery carefully use a craft knife to slice through the copper connecting the pads. Follow the red line here:

You can do this safely with your Furby turned on, so you know when you’ve cut through correctly. Do NOT cut all the way through the board, and do NOT cut anything else. This should render your Furby mute! If you do not have a soldering iron, be advised that this is a PERMANENT change.