Headphone cable fixing guide

[t0wer]

Didn't know if this should be in guides and tutorials, but I figured if someone was looking for this guide, the audio section would be the first place they would look.

 

for a first time, an actual camera, not a terrible phone camera.

I had a hard time taking pics, a lot of my methods require 2 hands.

 

so you let your headphone cable fall into a paper shredder.

you can sell them broken on ebay for 1/10th the original price, or fix them yourself.

 

 

 

 

some of the tools I have.

 

mandatory

soldering iron

solder

wire cutters

multimeter(not really mandatory, but I wouldn't risk an amp before testing my work)

a packet of saltine crackers hidden behind the keyboard

 

wire and an 1/8" or 1/4" jack if you intend to replace the entire cable

or

heatshrink and lighter if you are just repairing an existing cable

 

optional

wire strippers

alligator clip helping hands(highly recommended, they are like $3 at harbor freight)

needle nose pliers

 

 

I'm not doing a full recable, I'm just fixing the broken section.

but I'll go over some parts of a full recable.

 

Now to begin

cut off the damaged portion of the cable.

 

 

strip both of the cables(the jack end and the headphone end)

I like my wire strippers but the rubber covering was too stretchy and the strippers wouldn't cut it, so I had to use the slow method and use my wire cutters.

be careful as there will most likely be a few separate wires.

 

 

these wires had some coating on them so they wouldn't short on each other.

I just took a lighter to them, it's kind of hard to see, but on the red and green cable, towards the tip the color fades away.

 

 

 

tinning the wires, just stick the soldering iron on the wires, and put the solder on the other side of the wires, that way the solder sticks to the wire and not the iron

I had problems with these wires, I don't think my lighter trick really worked, but I eventually got them tinned just putting the iron on them longer than I usually do.

 

 

you can kind of see the solder on the end of both wires.

 

 

 

remember to put the heat shrink on before you solder, I've forgotten far too many times and have had to resolder wires.

here is where helping hands are really nice. they make it really easy to position both wires being soldered.

 

 

 

heat up the wires and put the solder on the other side so the solder flows through the wires and doesn't stick on the Iron.

if the wires are properly tinned not much solder should be needed.

 

make sure you have a good solder joint, I don't really have pics of good vs bad, just look up cold solder joint or dry solder joint.

 

 

position the heat shrink over the joint and grab the lighter to compress the heat shrink.

don't hold the lighter in one place, and don't hold it on too long, just long enough to compress the heat shrink.

 

 

I'm pretty confident in my work(ok I'm just forgetful ) so I do this after the initial heat shrink, but it's best to grab the multimeter in ohms mode to check the connection.

This is one side of the headphone, and 1 driver measures around 30ohm.(if you measure from the ring to the tip of the jack, it will be over both drivers, so for this pair of headphones was about 60 ohm)

 

you want to make sure there's no short (0 ohm) and no open (infinite ohm) connection.

 

 

I slid a piece of heat shrink over the cable before I started soldering, to cover up all the smaller wires that had to be exposed for soldering.

unfortunately that piece of heat shrink was a few mm short of covering the entire thing, so the shiny parts are electrical tape wrapped around the ends of the heat shrink.

 

 

 

 

 

FULL RECABLE PART

this section can very greatly depending on what headphone you are using

 

 

to start, open up the headphones, I had to pull off the pads to get access to a few screws

 

 

The wire just goes through the casing, you can drill out a hole and stick a jack if you want for a detachable cable.

 

 

the back of the driver, you just need to solder the wires on to the little pcb.

they should be color coded, and ground for both sides should be the same color.(2 grounds to one driver doesn't work out too well)

 

 

the most common colors I've seen have been

red - right channel

green - left channel

copper - ground

 

and for the jack  (this goes for 1/8" and 1/4")

you have tip, ring, and sleeve.

tip is left channel

ring is right channel

sleeve is ground

 

if you plan on braiding the wires, I'd suggest labeling the ends with a piece of tape before you start, or you just grab the multimeter at the end to determine what cable goes where.

I don't have a pic of the one I made, but here's a pic of the stock braided HE-500 cable.

[AraSarkisyan]

nice. I want to sleeve my headphone cable in paracord.  also is that a happy hacking kb in the back? 

[ShearMe]

I was more interested in your background stuff, tbh.  :lol:

[t0wer]

nice. I want to sleeve my headphone cable in paracord.  also is that a happy hacking kb in the back? 

 

I wish, it's just a poker 2 from the last massdrop.