Force FX OWK RotS - sound not working (stock saber)

Longshot here but I'm tinkering with my old obi wan Force FX saber that stopped working a while ago. I have it all apart, cleaned the board, resoldered better wires, and straight wired it all together for testing.

I got the lights to work but the speaker won't make a peep. I spliced in a little project speaker to see if I can get anything at all but that didn't work either.

The inputs are pretty simple - three wires. A speaker wire, battery negative and the other speaker wire which is tied into the battery positive...for some reason.

I don't see anything burnt on the board but there's also a blob of plastic that looks like its covering some chip or something. I saw a spot for a surface mounted resistor that I tried to bridge but that didn't do anything.

Honestly I'm just goofing with it while dragging my feet on my neopixel build but wanted to see if there were any thoughts. I may just end up converting it but thought it would be fun to try.