LG WK7 ThinQ teardown

30th November 2019

Before disassembly:

Peel off the rubber pad that covers the screws.

Remove the four screws.

Remove the base, taking care not to yank the cable at the rear.

Ease the cable out of it's tidy.

To unplug the connector, you have to lever up the clip.

Pull up the perforated metal sleeve that encloses everything by half-an-inch.

Remove the grounding connector.

Remove the sleeve the rest of the way.

It has a two transducer design, with a fully sealed enclosure.

Remove this connector.

Unscrew the wireless module.

Remove this connector too (pull lever up).

Now with the device upside-down, remove the four screws around the rim.

The front may require a bit of prying.

You can now pull the top off.

Remove the four screws that holds down the main board.

Unplug the connector.

Remove the main board.

The audio chip appears to be an 88C554TG4 BURR-BROWN 88002

The speaker enclosure is fully sealed and cannot be opened non-destructively, however for maximum disassembly you can remove the screws that fasten the tweeter.

Over-all, it's quite easy to disassemble and re-assemble.

The reason I disassembled mine was because I have an inner-ear disorder which means bass makes me feel dizzy, so I wanted to "de-bass" it. I don't have pictures of this procedure but I can outline it.

First I removed the woofer. I did this by cutting through the surround and spider with a knife, and pulling the cone and coil assembly out with force. I did not remove the basket or the magnet and left as much of the wires behind as possible.

Then I mounted a smaller, less bassy driver in it's place. I purchased a "Visaton FR 7 - 4 Ohm Round Fullrange Speaker 6.5cm". This has a specified resonant frequency of 220Hz. I soldered the wires from the old speaker onto the terminals for the new one. I used 3mm fibreboard as a spacer between the new speaker and the basket of the old one. I also cut a ring of 3mm fibreboard to fill the gap between the outside of the new speaker and the enclosure. This was installed with copious amounts of epoxy-resin glue to create a total air-tight seal.

This modification worked much better than I expected. It thwarted the system's bass response completely without messing-up it's over-all sound quality.