Yamaha APX acoustic guitars use a stereo endpin jack socket with an external strap button – pretty standard stuff. So when a customer recently contacted me to source a replacement for his APX9C, I thought it would be a simple one to sort out; a quick search for the original technical document, find the original part number, order that part from Yamaha. What is that easy? Of course it wasn’t.

I did find the technical document for the APX9C’s pre-amplifier, SYSTEM13, and in that I did find the correct part number for the jack socket, Mi801700. However, when I went to order the part, I found that it had been discontinued.

I presumed Yamaha would still be making these jack sockets; 1. They are a part that typically fails over time, and 2. You can usually rely on Yamaha to still manufacture spare parts for a lot of their older instruments. The APX9C isn’t a current model but the APX line is still in production and the older guitars are just as popular as the new ones. It seems odd to me then that Yamaha would stop producing a part like this.

There are various pre-amp systems across the Yamaha APX 5-50 models however the jack socket used is the same whichever one you have. So when you need a replacement socket, you are going to have to find an alternative. For this particular customer, we ended up asking Yamaha’s tech department for some spares and they kindly sent over a few options. You could use a socket from a current APX however I think they aren’t compatible with the the older pre-amps. There are plenty of other replacement jack sockets available that will do the job however be prepared to do some soldering.