EX500 and Horrible Audio

[motofreak008]

I have a VHF EX500 that has a little audio problem. The radio turns on and you can hear the test beep, but it is very faint, no matter how high you turn the radio up. It transmits and receives, but you can't quite hear what is being said. Has the speaker gone bad, or something else wrong?

[escomm]

Sounds like a bad volume control pot

[Lake Effect]

Maybe the speaker is packed full of metal shavings. I see that a lot on those radios.

L.E.

[Karfield]

We've noticed here that when we send EX units into the depot quite a few come back with new speakers. From that it tells me that the EX series radios have speaker problems in general so I'd just change that and see how it goes.

[Terriers618]

we have the same exact issue - more with ex600-xls than the ex600. It has ranged from a bad speaker to a bad PA to other board issues.

A lot of them - especially the ones manufactured in 2003 - are going bad.

[motofreak008]

So how hard would it be to check if the speaker is bad? I don't have a speaker mic, is there a way to connect a speaker to the connector and check how that audio is. If so, where are the audio pins located?