Headphone Plug / Wire Repair – At no cost

Your nice stereo headphones went monophonic? Sound is intermitent, on a single side, or there is no sound at all? Ppushing, pulling, and bending the headphones back and forth finally broke them. In this post we’re going to focus on the Plug only, because is the most common damage point. We’ll talk about the wire later.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
.

Procedure

.

The traditional procedure is buying a new plug and welding it. Personally, I hate the cheap chinese plugs, and I don’t have time to buy a high quality plug on a specialized store. Why throwing away the old plug?

Peel off the old plug as shown. Please, use a pair of pliers to hold it!!

You will notice how the plug gets free

Another view, white background to improve the contrast

Cut a good chunk of wire (ok, not very much) to ensure that all the damaged wire is removed.

-

Now the interesting part begins:  Make a very delicate cut around the isulation and pull it. You’ll find three wires inside.

Do not cut or damage that wires in any way, you can use the old chunk to gain some practice first.

Now you have three wires hanging out, and maybe a nylon or cotton fiber too. The nylon adds strenght to the wire, but at this point it’s not necessary anymore. Cut it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
.

Insulation Removal

.
Pay attention, the next step varies depending on the quality of your headphones. On higher quality models, each one of the three wires includes his own plastic insulating jacket.

But in other cheaper models, the copper wires are just “painted”, with no plastic cover. The paint works as a insulator, and the most common paint colors are red, blue, green, or white.

The key to remove it is burning it. The wire will lit very fast, like a dynamite fuse (Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner). Be ready to blow out the flame, before it eats away all the wire!! Only a few burnt milimeters are required

(Ok ok, I know is the same wire used in the photo above, I did’nt had a cheap wire sample. You can see one here)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
.

Soldering

.
Remove the soot on the piece with your fingers. Then heat up the wire and add some solder to it.

Remove the excess if needed

Proceed to weld the wires on the plug

Yellow or non painted wire: Ground

Red wire: Right Channel

Green or Blue wire: Left Channel

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
.

Testing

.
I strongly suggest you to test the connections before going any further. My  wire color code may be wrong for your case

If everything is fine, you can proceed. Apply your favorite glue (hot glue in my case) to make “the body” of the plug.

Make sure that the plug, the connections, and a decent section of the wire are well covered under “the cylinder” of glue, with no air bubbles. The glue prevents any movement, that would break the welds.

On the example shown in the picture, the hot glue starts where my fingers are placed and ends right before the plug’s metal ring. Once dried you can paint it black, or cover it with tape if you are in a hurry.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
.

Keep in mind

.
Bad handling habits are the root of your problems.  As a Social Service, I’ve made a small drawing explaining what must be avoided.

Winding the wire loosely will also improve its life expectancy.

Advertisement