Gameboy Color Internal Pro-Sound mod

The gameboy color is pretty sweet whether it be for gaming or for making music. I mean come on, it's got a color screen! I have done many external pro-sounds on the GBC but never an internal one. This little guide will help you do just that, an internal pro-sound. Now I am assuming you have basic soldering skills, a tri-wing screwdriver, and a small philips screwdriver. You are also going to need 2 lengths of thin wire about 4 or 5 inches long. I use wire that I robbed from an NES controller. :)

The first thing you are going to do is remove the back of the GBC. Take off the battery cover and remove the batteries (if they are still in there). Remove the six tri-wing screws. 4 in the main back and 2 in the battery compartment. I like to use a little magnetic tray like this....


Once the GBC is open you will be here...


You will first be soldering on the exposed side of the PCB(printed circuit board). This is the side with the cartridge slot. You are going to be soldering to the volume pot. There are 5 connections to the left of the volume wheel. If they are numbered from 1-5 from top to bottom you will be soldering to connections number 2 and 3. (left and right)



strip your wire and tin the tips. Don't leave too much wire exposed. You only need about 1/8 of an inch bare...



Now go ahead and solder the wires to the connections on the volume pot. The black goop on my solder points is liquid tape. I used a brown and an orange wire. The brown on mine is connected to number 2 for obvious reasons :P You will then need to route the wire down the side of the PCB. I had a little bit of trouble deciding where to run the wires and ended up running them through the side of the cartridge slot. and along the PCB edge.



Now we need to remove the PCB completely from the gameboy. This will help in routing your wires and you need to solder to the screen side of the PCB. Go ahead and remove the 3 screws that hold the PCB to the gameboy case.



You also need to disconnect the ribbon cable for the screen. Push the little tabs on the sides of the connector towards the top of the gameboy. This will allow you to remove the PCB. The screen and buttons will stay in the front piece of the GBC shell.



Now that you have the PCB removed you can solder to the points on the headphone jack. You are going to solder to the points labeled 2 and 3 in the P5 section.



2 being left and 3 being right. So again on mine the brown wire goes to number 2. lol... number 2. Once you solder these points you can flip the PCB back over and reinstall it to the front casing. Be sure that your buttons are all in the right spots and that your new wires are not in the way of anything. Once it is installed again with the 3 screws you want to go to this area where the little things labeled EM2 and EM3 are located. These are getting removed. Just heat them up with your soldering iron and they will pull of easily. I use tweezers to grab them.



Now you can finish routing your wire and close the gameboy. Don't forget anything like your IR cover or your power switch. It sucks to have to pull it apart again because you forgot to install your power switch. Trust me. I routed my wires like so....



If you choose my route be sure the wires are not in the way of the cartridge slot. I used a little bit of liquid tape to hold them in place. I also used liquid tape on my solder points on the volume pot to be sure I don't have any crosstalk. Now put your GBC back together and enjoy your new internal pro-sound mod.



***When doing this mod I noticed that there are more than one type of GBC PCB. Mine was the CGB-CPU-05....



I have another GBC PCB labeled CGB-CPU-03. This one is almost exactly the same but it has an extra EM unit labeled EM4 next to the two that I removed. I don't think this will affect anything in this tutorial, so if you have this type of PCB don't get discouraged.