Yesterday afternoon I was on my way to my parents’ house. I bust out my earbuds, put on some music, and start walking to the bus stop. I’ve done this song and dance a thousand times, nothing unusual.

One of the earbuds doesn’t work.

I try restarting it, resetting my phone, letting it stay in its case a bit - nada. Weird. I google “[earbud model] right earbud not working” and find a bunch of slop. I add “reddit” to the end of my search and find actually useful results.

The top rated suggestion, with hundreds of people praising it for fixing their earbud, is to shove a toothpick inside of a small hole between the speaker and the charging port. Unorthodox, but my warranty’s rant out so what am I losing? I start annoying people on the bus for a toothpick, recieve one from a confused but well meaning old lady, and start poking around. Doesn’t work, damn.

The second response is some PR bullshit that I skip over. Third one is someone saying the company’s crap. Fourth reply is an actual solution - “it’s probably some buildup. Try putting a toothpick in the hole between the speaker and the charging port, and if that doesn’t help, take out the ear sillicone and clean out the inner speaker area with a toothpick.” Huh. Again, nothing to lose, might aswell. I take my toothpick and go to town on the earbud’s innards - works! I can hear music again!

…Sorta; the right earbud is still a little muffled. I need to open my phones Right/Left balance settings and give the right side a 0.05 boost to not have all the music I listen to sound like it’s slightly to my left. “Weird. Probably I can’t clean well enough with this wooden toothpick. I’ll get to my parents’ house and clean more thoroughly. That’ll get it back in shape.”

I arrive at my parents’ house, and look for some rubbing alcohol to properly clear the port - they ain’t got it. What they do have, however, is a sewing needle. “Hm. Well I guess that’ll reach deeper than my wooden toothpick could. Could clean out any grime I couldn’t reach or maybe shoved deeper with it.” I take the needle and go to town.

I put on the earbuds, expecting clarity.

It’s way worse now. I need to set the right side to gain a +0.5 boost now to hear normally.

So, after some googling, what I think I did was stab the delicate speaker membrane on a very small electronic in an irreversible way. The wooden toothpick only mildly dented it, but the sharp needle proceeded to destroy its innards. Not only that, the sound quality is degrading quick, as today I needed to set the boost to 0.7.

Shit.

…Does anyone know any good earbuds I could buy?