Hello?

My cell phone's been acting up lately -- very quiet voices on the other end. I've been having trouble hearing. Volume's all the way up. Sometimes I can't hear anything at all. And sometimes it's alright.

Well I tried to call Vicki from the store today to see if she thought we needed anything else. We were connected. She could hear me. But nothing. Nada. Zippo on my end.

She even called back. The speaker that does the ringing worked fine. But still nothing in my ear.

So I took it apart when I got home. And I found something unexpected and pretty interesting. There is no direct contact between any conductors and the posts on the earpiece speaker. And this is by design.

As a matter of fact, the strip of copper contacts that goes to the speaker ends in two terminal copper squares, which are separated by a piece of rubber -- again, apparently on purpose, from their corresponding contacts on the back of the speaker. But they're in close enough proximity to them to have an effect on them, making the diaphram move and pouring voices into my ear when I'm talking on the phone.

Most of the time.

Apparently, whatever held them close to those contacts wasn't working the way it used to, and my intermittent problems were a result of this. Finally, today they were apparently far enough away that they had no effect on the speaker at all.

So I fixed it. With -- you guessed it....

Duct Tape.

a little strip to make sure the copper strip is held in place where it is supposed to be. Won't move from there.

And it works great now.