Do 2.1mm jacks lose their "spring" after a while?

[Mark Hammer]

I was modding a friend's reissue Dynacomp last night, and I could not get it to work with a battery.  My first reaction was "Oh no, what did I do to it?"    Checked out the battery clip from Molex connector to the clip and everything checked out.  No discontinuities.  Plugged a power source into the jack and lo and behold, everything worked just fine.   My understanding is that my friend had the Dynacomp on his pedalboard for a while.

All I can assume here is that the leaf contact that needs to spring back into place when one takes the adaptor plug out, and connect the battery to the board, has simply lost its spring tension and leaves a discontinuity.

Is this something others have experienced?

[antonis]

I've noticed it a couple of times with cheap panel mount jacks (metallic body with nut) but they had their spring blade displaced (out of proper retaining posision..) rather than actually "lost" their spring retaining ability..

[anotherjim]

Yes. But if it's been in its operated (open) state for a long time, the contact could well be tarnished.

[blackieNYC]

Replaced a boss jack - just corroded/tarnished/oxidized. But I suppose I don't know if the resistance one might encounter when the internal closure is corroded or just weakly sprung. but the visible contacts looked bad, looking into the jack.  But yeah, it just stopped working.