Why everyone should keep a Soldering iron (and wire stripper)

The children have a toy guitar which they played with for quite a lot, with plenty of dropping and banging before it disappeared in a cupboard for a few months. Here it is, plenty of buttons for playing tunes, LEDs and the like.

But horror, when it was found in the back of the cupboard and new batteries inserted absolutely nothing happened. Horror for the children I have to add, I didn't really miss the sound it made!

But given my geeky nature I had to see what was the problem.  Opening it proved to be tricky. Although not glued it was held together by 18 screws, some of which were very tight. Eventually the inside was revealed:

Fortunately, the reason nothing worked was immediately obvious.

The wire to the positive battery terminal had snapped off. So the fix was a quick strip of the insulation and soldering the wire back onto the terminal.

Finally, replacing 18 screws turned out to be a lot quicker and the guitar lit up and played as soon as it was turned back on!

I'm looking forward to years more play out of it !!