UPDATE: People smarter than me have realised that you do not need to go to the trouble of de-soldering the buzzer – you just need to remove the metal diaphram from the buzzer. See their excellent comments below this post.
Stopping a KitchenAid kettle from beeping, at all. My wife and I were recently in the market for a new electric kettle and were having trouble finding one of suitable quality and visual appeal. Eventually our attention was drawn to the KitchenAid KEK1722 kettle which, although somewhat expensive, seemed to offer what we wanted. We don’t own any other KitchenAid products, but thought that as it is a respected premium brand, there wouldn’t be be any issues with it right? Wrong. Once again, I didn’t bother to check online reviews. If I had, I would have quickly noticed a very common complaint with this product – it produces a very loud cheap-sounding piezo beep every time a button’s pressed, when the water’s boiled (three beeps!), even when you just put it on the base. And there’s no option to turn the beeps off. To quote Amazon reviewer Charlie2095, who ended up sending his kettle back: At first the beeping isn’t a big deal. After a while, it becomes annoying. Then grating. This thing beeps for every reason it can think of. It even beeps when you set it back on the base! What the heck for? “Beep! I am back on the base!” “Beep! You just pushed a button! Beep! You pushed another button!” It astounds me how some of these products get through the design process and out the door with such an annoying and in this case totally unnecessary “feature”. They’ve obviously put some careful consideration into the visual design, but what happened after that? Did they just hand if off to the electronic design guys and say “here you go, we’re done with the visual design, just do what you want and throw it in a box”. Did they not do any customer testing on the final product? It’s not just the fact that it beeps too much, it’s also the quality of the sound. We have a Samsung dishwasher that beeps, but it is a quieter and more acceptable polyphonic chime, not a cheap loud piezo buzzer screech. At the extreme end of the scale, our Asko washing machine (mentioned in another post) has no beeps at all, and it’s no problem from a functional point of view. Anyway, like Charlie2095, I put up with it for a couple of days, then couldn’t stand it anymore. But I didn’t send it back, no, I got out my soldering iron and fixed it good! So if you came here because you have an annoying KitchenAid KEK1722 kettle, and you don’t mind voiding your warranty, here’s how to do it. Note that I would not recommend this procedure to anyone without electronics soldering experience and a good temperature controlled soldering iron. To silence the beeps, you need to locate and remove the piezo buzzer. The circuit board containing the buzzer is located under a cover on the bottom of the kettle itself (not the kettle base that plugs in to the wall). You will need to remove two triangle recess screws (photo below). I didn’t have the correct screwdriver bit, but I managed to use a tri-wing bit. Even a simple flat-bladed jewelery screw driver of the right size will work. Before you start, remove the AA batteries if installed. Remove the triangle screws and carefully lift off the cover.
You should now see the circuit board with the piezo buzzer as shown below. There are three connectors, indicated by yellow arrows, that will need to be unplugged so that you can lift up the board in order to de-solder the buzzer. These connectors were covered with a hot-melt glue in my kettle, so the first task was to very carefully prise away the glue. Once the connectors are un-plugged, remove the three philips screws holding the circuit board (blue arrows). This should allow the board to be lifted from the right hand side as viewed in the photo. You will need to hold the connector wires back out of the way to get the board past them.
You should be able to lift the board enough (the two wires that pass across the blue capacitor can be pulled out of the base a bit to give some slack) to get in behind with a soldering iron and remove the buzzer (the black component indicated by the red arrow above).
I didn’t take photos of the de-soldering because I was on my own, but I just gently pulled on the buzzer with a pair of pliers as I heated each of the two pins in turn on the back side of the board. There are some surface mount components near one of the pins, so be very careful with the iron. Once the buzzer is gone, push the board back down and replace the screws and connectors.
Put the batteries back in and replace the covers. That’s it! No more beeping, just the gentle sound of heating water.
Once Around the Block 
Hey,
Thank you ten times over! I was on the fence on buying one if these and (thankfully) read reviews first and found out about the excessive beeping. It being the internet and all, I knew somebody savvy enough that was bugged by the same thing would post a tutorial, and here it is! So thank you kindly.
Cheers
Thnaks for you comment. I get so much helpful info from the internet myself that I try and give a little back sometimes. I hope it helps you out.
My wife and I had a similar experience on the front end except we did read the reviews that warned about the beeping. I just did not believe that it could possibly be that annoying and if all of the other qualities where what I wanted then surely I could tolerate a small indicator of boil completion…… oh how wrong I was. The beep is so grating and insistent that you could use it as an aversion stimulus. Place it on a fridge door for weight loss, or on a lighter to help quit smoking;)
Thank you for taking the time to post this. I did not use s soldering iron I just carefully pulled the beeper out with a pair of needle nosed pliers, which did the job beautifully. It is amazing how the absence of something can be so rewarding.
Cheers!
Thanks for the comment. I’m pleased it helped you out.
You are a legend! Thanks a ton. Such a great kettle now that it has been silenced. Seriously hope the good folk at KitchenAid at least offer customers the ability to turn the beeping off without having to use their engineering skills.
Thanks for posting this. I just wiggled the speaker carefully until it came off, the legs eventually break from the repeated motion. Now I just need a manual coffee grinder and I can make morning coffee without waking everybody up.
There seems to be no need to unsolder or wriggle until you break the connectors to the speaker… All I did was remove the cover as described (I used a broken triangular needle file to unscrew the two retaining screws), grasped the black plastic cover of the speaker and wriggled it loose, took it off (it is just pressed on – comes off easily); beneath this is a very fine metallic diaphragm which I reasoned must be the bit that vibrates and makes the beep so I removed this, closed everything up again, put some water in and joy or joys, no beep – just boiled water! I did this to save my dog’s sanity: the beep obviously hurt her ears and she became terrified to come into the kitchen, even for her food.
YES! Thank you both! I unscrewed the triangle screws with a tiny flat electrical screwdriver, removed the black cap and thin metal sheet that was under it and voilá; silence at the breakfast table.
I didn’t realize that you couldn’t silence the kettle until after I bought it and simply tried to live with it…
but maaan it gets annoying after a while not being able to make that morning tea without waking up the whole family.
There’s no need for all that noise, *beep* when you fill it and return it to its base then *beep* when you turn it on, *beep-beep-beep* when brought to boiling and *beep* again after pouring your cup when putting it back in its base – 6 beeps total! I have reclaimed my stealthy breakfast 🙂
It worked! And I agree with Bob … just open the cover and use a needle nose pliers to wriggle the black cylindrical, offending device off! Many thanks. The pictures above were very helpful — thanks Harvey. Still wondering why Kitchen Aid have/had this feature.
Brilliant – this works. I just pulled it out with pliers.
Yes, thank god. Works a treat.
Did not have a triangle screwdriver but you can use a flat screwdriver if you wedge the blade into one of the triangle sides and lean the screwdriver over a little to hold in place and turn gently. Does not take much effort.
Sure enough once the black cover is up and off, grab the buzzer gently with some pliers and wiggle a bit….. Pop.
Yay….. Silent boiling!
Oh I wish I’d read this before I bought it. I’m shallow and just liked the look of it. The beeping is so annoying. Hate it and may have to rethink the kettle option or try and follow the instructions above. Loathsome thing.
Hi Harvey,
Thank you very much for your detailed post and the addition of pictures I found very useful, I think you have provided a shortcut for this ‘de-bussing’ procedure for a number of frustrated consumers that just want this problem to ‘go away’ with the least amount of fuss, well done! I chose the lounge chair technique, with an upturned kettle on a tea towel in my lap and my trusty leatherman multi-tool in hand. Bob’s tip to remove the metal disc from the piezo buzzer instead of de soldering and removing the buzzer itself was a winner for me and although I haven’t tried to reinstate it, I have thought that this could be easily reversed if for some reason you wanted to. Thanks Bob
Where’s my pliers!
You just made my day! I bought this annoying beeeeeeeeping kettle yesterday night and I’ve spent the evening telling it to shut up. This is now fixed thanks to you! I’m having a white tea to celebrate.
a life-saver – my wife was about to hit me over the head with the thing – as well as agreeing with all of the above comments I could add that they really should have mentioned the beeping in the printed ‘features’ on the outside of the box – then we would all have been warned off before buying the thing.
Do any of you have a problem getting the lid to open, and perhaps trick og a reengineering solution to this?
Thanks Harvey. Peace is recovered in our family due to your very usefull hint.:o)
Harvey, you are an absolute super star!!! We also purchased this kettle because of the sleek look – who would have thought this little bastard could be so annoying. Beep Beep Beep.. we were dreaming it haha
I found your blog through a google search and my partner followed your steps (apart from soldering, he pulled it off). Ahh now only the sound of water boiling…music to our ears 🙂
You are a lifesaver. My mother in law bought one of these kettles and it was about to get an adjustment with a hammer. So, in a sense, thanks for keeping the next few weeks while my mother in law is here bearable
Also a thousand thanks from me and m y wife. Why the company chose to put such a diabolic detail into that otherwise very nice kettle remains a mystery.
did this today, even went and bought a soldering iron to get it done. I ended up just disassembling the peizio after heating heating the points, cause it wouldn’t come out of the board, worked fine.
Thanks so much for posting this, sanity at 6:30 am here I come
Between Harvey’s excellent description and photos and Bob’s suggestion to skip the soldering step and simply pull off the beeper cover and take out the metal disc, I was in and out and boiling water again in under 2 minutes! I used a small flat-head screwdriver to unscrew the cover screws. To Mads’ question, the cover just needs to be pried out, and it doesn’t matter where along its edge you start; I used the same screwdriver as for the cover screws. The cover of the beeper needed a very firm pull to come off, so don’t be timid. I used pliers, and didn’t need to twist or wiggle it. Like many of y’all, I bought this thing because it was by far the coolest looking option at the store. I tried to ignore the beeping to justify my choice, but I think my fiancée was rethinking her choice 😉 so many thanks to you, Harvey, for this sanity-saving blog!
I feel that Harvey should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for this post. The peace is the silence while boiling water. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for this. You have given me back my sanity! I bought this kettle, in cream, to match my Kitchen Aid food processor (which doesn’t beep at all), and toaster (which beeps once when the toast pops up!) I thought I could tolerate it, but after a few weeks I just couldn’t cope any more. Followed the instructions, pulled off the black speaker, and hey presto….silence. Your instructions worked like a dream!
Thank you so much for this Harvey. The kettle was insitu for approximately 3 weeks and it was getting to the extremely annoying stage!! I agree with all the above comments, who knew a bleep could be so annoying!! But thankfully it bleeps no more. Following your instructions (pictures are brilliant)and instead of soldering I used pliers to pull out the culprit, it took less than 2 minutes and now peace is restored. I’m off for another cup of tea, bliss!
From the Netherlands.. Thank you SO MUCH for the instructions how to DEPEEP this beautiful and in other ways silent kettle.. I really can’t stand the beeps all the time. Millions thans Harvey!!
Thanx you so much… I hated the beep from the first moment ! Thanx to you very good information step by step, I DE-BEEPED this beautiful kettle myself!! A very happy Patricia
Dear Harvey, thank you so much for providing such a simple step by step guide, you have made another person so happy….!! I used the pointed pliers method to remove the buzzer! no solder required. Peace at last…thanks so much. Phil
Thnx a lot! I de-beeped my kettle as well:)
Thanks for the guide.
We lasted 24hrs before the noise became intolerable.
Kettle swiftly silenced by pulling off the buzzer cover and removing the thin metal diaphragm disc.
3mins work for a quiet life & happy wife.
Owned this dastardly thing for a couple years before extracting the beeper from it. Now this kettle is perfect! Should have done this on day one!
Thanks very much. I now have a cool looking kettle that no longer sounds like a strangled canary!
Thanks Harvey. You are a champion. Instructions worked a treat.
My boss (in good humor) threatened to fire me for selecting this kettle for our office. Your instructions saved my job! TY!!!
Thanks a lot ! I would have never dared pop the buzzer off my brand new kettle without you !
Hey guys, tried pulling the black buzzer and had to try pull quite hard and ended up pulling the whole buzzer off. Now there is a slight leak from the front of the kettle, anybody have any ideas?? Cheers, Gary
Thankyou!!!!
Just de-beeped my kettle this evening. WHAT a good thing to stop this really harassing noise. how the designers can ever imagine the consumer wanting their appliance to be continually chirping… don’t think this design element would have come from a focus group! And thanks for the great instructions and photos. I’ve had this noisy kettle for 3-4 years, but it took maybe 3 min total to do this simple surgery. Thanks!
Thanks mate. We found this thing as annoying as everybody else obviously did. Your inst cautions were perfect and worked really well. Appreciate it. Cheers.
Thanks for your help. Beep no more. I thought it was only me that thought the beep was ridiculous. Cheers.
As a self-confessed tea drinking addict and already an owner of the KitchenAid food mixer and kettle, it made sense to buy the matching kettle. What I hadn’t realised was just how irritating the incessant beeping would become. The triple beep finale also had the undesirable effect of waking up my 6 month old daughter – usually after an hour long battle to get her to sleep! So just 3 days in and a Google search brought me here!
I had a go at removing the piezo diaphragm but in the end the whole thing just popped out! Job done in about 2 minutes! I think I’ll package the piezo up and send it back to KitchenAid with some strong views….
Ripped mine out thanks SO MUCH to everyone’s suggestions on here! Definitely did a happy dance! No more beeping!!! WOOOOOOTTTTTT!
You have made my day!!
Very easy!!
Thank you so much!!
I was wondering if a dab of epoxy on that beeper thing might be enough to stifle it. Then you could hear quieter beep or buzz to let you know your water is ready.
Amazon sells Tri wing screwdrivers very cheaply- get the one for Nintendo, fits perfectly
Leegoal Tri-wing Screwdriver for Nintendo Wii, Gamecube, Gameboy Advance https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000S6AG9G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_Jucaxb0XWHXQT
Thanks a lot, your level of detail and pictures are amazing.
I agree that the beeping is annoying. Ours has stopped working and is displaying the water drop icon as if there is no water, and it will not turn on. Any suggestions? We tried batteries… (didn’t have any in it in the first place, but still worked) No luck. Tried differing water levels… no luck. Tried no water… no luck! Very disappointed with a very expensive kettle breaking after the best part of a year!
Easy fix for your broken kettle as I had the exact same problem.Grab some CLR or descaler and let it sit over night in the kettle, rinse and boil a couple of times and there you go you have your kettle back 🙂
I hope someone from KitchenAid is reading this thread.
I used just a regular small jewelers screwdriver to remove the triangular screws. Took one tiny twist and a pull with needle nose pliers and the black speaker cover with the diaphragm came right off. Took two minutes to do the entire operation. Thanks.
Just done this with my Bosch TWK8631GB. The instruction I think apply to most beeping kettles. Silence is golden! Thanks 🙂
We have two kettles in use because my wife refuses to listen to the bleep. I will follow your advice and remove the bleeper. Many thanks for saving our marriage.
I don’t have a buzzer at hand right now to experiment, but I believe that if you just cover the top hole with adhesive tape of some sort it will be almost completely muted. It can be recovered in the future without violating the warranty.
Sorry if this comment goes against the philosophy of the post!
Word of warning – the handle on this thing breaks of, and it does so when you lift it, at it is filled with boiling water.
Hi. I am dealing with the piezoelectric speaker of a satellite finder which I hope is the same as your Kitchen Aid’s speaker. I want to remove the speaker so that I can attach wires to its contact points. I would use your method of removing the speaker but am inexperienced in soldering/desoldering. Therefore, I was wondering if I could just pull off the speaker with pliers.
Thanks!
The reliable way to attach wires in place of the piezo would be to solder them, in which case you’d have to either de-solder the piezo, or cut its legs off – if you can get at them. Just removing the diaphragm with pliers as people have done here will not give you anywhere to attach wires.
Thank you! One more happy customer here. I “fixed” my kettle even though it was a different model (the buzzer looked the same).
I love you guys!!!! My kettle is finall beep free!!
Hi they have been recalled in the UK due to a faulty handle. It may with no reason just fall off.
Cheers Phil
I tried two layers of pieces of gorilla tape in the hole of the little speaker: it is still audible for person in kitchen so you get feedback when hitting buttons, but I cannot hear it in next room: perfect! I actually bought the KitchenAid specifically because of this post because I knew I couldn’t find the type of kettle I wanted without getting an obnoxious beep, too. Thanks for resolving the unexplained need these companies have to make everything beep!
I have to say – thanks, thanks, thanks! – to everyone who contributed.
I was almost ready to give the kettle away, because of the annoyance created by the useless beeping sound.
Such an easy fix – 5-10 minutes, using a flat screwdriver and a pair of pliers.
I’m so glad I found a support group! My flatmates were going to commit me to a mental institute because it was driving me crazy! Tomorrow corona virus lockdown task is to de beep this damn kettle!
Thank you for this. My dog was terrified of the beeping in our kettle and it was driving us all crazy. Note for anyone with a Cuisinart – the beeper didn’t seem to have a cover but instead was just one unit. So I ended up yanking the whole thing, a little by accident, but the outcome was the same – a quiet kettle. Thanks for this post and all the helpful comments!