There's nothing more satisfying than having just about every one of my electronics components fitted with a USB-C connector. It's the legacy electronics that still have the mini and micro connectors that drive me crazy, and I try really hard to try to migrate away from those and standardize on USB-C as much as I can.
Every once in awhile I come across a piece of technology that I just can't part with, kind of like my Bose QC35 headsets which my wife and I both have, and it irks me to no end that I have to keep carrying around a USB micro connector just to charge these things.
One day while I was on a flight to Los Angeles, I found a website that was selling a conversion kit. Wow, I think I need to get a couple of these things, so I placed an order with these folks - https://starkdrive.bike/accessories/bose-usb-c-board/
The boards came in, and I decided to do my headset first. Everything went really great, instructions were perfect, except when I tried to attach the ribbon cable to the new board. Something seemed off, it didn't click in place, then I figured something was awry so I ended up pulling out the microscope to dig into more detail.
This is the new board that I couldn't get the ribbon cable to attach to.
In the picture below you will see that the board on the left is the original board in my Bose QC35 and the board in the right is the replacement board with the USB-C connector in it. There is a ribbon cable that comes from another part of the ear cup that connects to this board (See above) and as you can see below, the connectors are quite different.
Replacement board zoom in
Original board zoom in
So, what to do? Well, I first reached out to the company that provided the board and they couldn't believe that there was a problem and they hadn't seen this ever before. Thinking that there was really no hope, I decided to take a chance and swap out the connector with the one that matches my ribbon cable and see what happens. There was a chance that the pins might not be exactly correct, or line up improperly, but it was worth the $3.21 to get a new connector on DigiKey - for those technically inclined here is the part number:
AXE520127A
I did do a video but it ended up being focused on the floor so everything was blurred out... But I took my hot air rework machine and removed the part, then cleaned up the PCB with some solder wick.
I was able to get the new connector on the board and zooming in on the board with the microscope revealed a nice solder job. I used solder paste, a dental explorer to apply to the PCB traces and my hot air rework station.
Since I ordered two boards - one for mine and one for my wife, I was able to compare the two now with my new connector on it.
Time for the big test - installation into my headset. This is the replacement board with the new connector.
AND IT WORKED!
Now, you would think this is the end of the story, but I was really concerned that the company that I bought these boards from was very convinced that they have never seen this before - and after literally hundreds of sales. I started to recall that I purchased my headset "refurbished" and wonder if that had anything to do with it. Since I did buy my wife's headset new from Bose, I was sure this was 100% original, and once I opened her headset to look at the board, I found that the original board had the SAME connector as the new board I received from the company. I did a simple board swap - as I should have been able to do with mine - and the whole thing took only 10 mins.
Here is a side by side showing MY original board on the bottom, and my wife's original board on the top. Clearly two different connectors.
I have to say that I need to send an email back to the company - StarkDrive - that supplied me with these boards and let them know that this looks like I purchased a counterfit Bose Headset, or the refurb process replaced a lot of components. I am sure they are wondering what in the world happened, but they were very nice. I guess this is a lesson learned from me - if you buy a "refurbished" piece of electronic equipment, you can never be sure what you are going to get. As you can see in the above picture, the PCB for my headset doesn't even have the Bose logo on it.
