How I (kinda) fixed and broke my GBC...

Watching Game of Thrones with my wife tonight. During one of the long winded speeches by Tyrion, I happened to eyeball something within the mess our kids made in the living room. It was my old cell phone (a Sanyo SCP-8100), now retired to my kids play basket. On the back of the phone, I remember a decent sized speaker that I experimented trying to make a hands free call once, but ended up being too much echo.

Then it hit me.

I grabbed my bit set and opened it up. I took the speaker from the rear out.

"This should work OK." I thought to myself.

I grabbed that GBC that I got a while ago that had a bad speaker in it, warmed up my soldering iron, opened the GBC up, removed the old one, installed the new pilfered speaker, and tried it out.

Old, decrepit speaker from the GBC. Rusted and sounding blown out.

Speaker from my old cell phone. Smaller than stock.

Side by side comparison of old and new.

After powering it on, the sound was working great...just a little too...tinny...or on the high side...for my taste. At least that's how it sounded with Pokemon's title screen. 

So, I tried to make a little baffle for it, to try and cut the highs down a bit.

I cut a little piece of fleece that my wife had scraps of. I used some thin cotton fabric scraps, but that didn't help much. The fleece worked a little better.

So I got it to a point where it works fine. Sound is coming out ok (Castlevania Adventure actually sounded awesome with this new speaker), and all was good. I went to put everything back together again. When I put the battery cover back on, I noticed that it was a little loose. So, I tried pulling the tab out in hopes to make it catch better to the case...

...F**K!...

Since I still had the soldering iron out, I warmed it back up again in an attempt to meld the two pieces together.

...Don't laugh. It held together quite fine.

Well, that was my adventure for tonight. I'm already on the search for battery covers, but I'm really not anal about it. 

[UPDATE]: On second though, the speaker does sound way better than the stock one. I think the baffle does make a difference. The Poke Center music sounds crisp on this new one.