Exposed headphone wires are generally not dangerous, as electricity passes through them at a low voltage dependent on the headphones’ impedance. If you accidentally touch an exposed wire, you can rest assured that your headphones will function properly. This wikiHow provides a step-by-step guide on repairing frayed headphone cables in an environmentally efficient and affordable way, requiring soldering skills.
To fix broken wires in headphones, you will need an army knife, a lighter, and heat-shrinking tubing. To complete the repair, strip the cable, remove the wire coating, rejoin the wires, and use a wire stripper or similar device. The two best ways to approach this involve soldering the headphone wires or using a combination of electrical tape and heat-shrink tubings.
To remove the wire coating, strip back the outer coating, wrap the exposed wires together, and wrap with electrical tape. If there may be multiple wires, use enamle paint remover from a hardware store and let the wires sit for about 30 minutes. Use 000 steel wool to rub the wire, then burn it in a gentle flame to remove the enamel coating. Clean the end using white spirit or another cleaning solution.
In summary, exposed headphone wires are generally not dangerous, and repairing them is an environmentally efficient and affordable way to prevent future damage.
📹 How to Fix Broken Headphone Cables
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📹 How To Solder Tiny Guage
Linxus Communications, LLC shows you how to correctly solder a stereo 3.5mm, ⅛”, mini plug, or headphone connector.
This is a good article but they forgot to mention a fundamental point. When you strip your cables you will essentially be left with four wires (for a set of standard headphones without a mic). Before burning off the coating cut your red ‘pair’ a little bit shorter so that you know which is which. The two uncoloured wires are grounds and will eventually be soldered to the gold leg. It makes it easier to burn the grounds first so that you can twist them together ready to be soldered onto the gold leg. Then burn the coloured wires and then length of the wire will let you know which is red and which is green. I originally burnt my wires and twisted the red with its ground and did the same with the green and had little to no sound which is probably what a lot of people here are finding. Hope this helps 👍
For those that have the Steel Series Arctis with their proprietary cable and random disconnects, audio only on one side or phone adapter not working without fiddling with the cable you can take a hammer and tap lightly the tip of the male connector (not the jack, their weird usb like cable) so that when you insert it in the female connector the metal housing pushes the contacts properly. This is how I fixed mine.
The burned enamel residue and, if you burn for a long time, the copper oxide are very good insulators AND very good at preventing solder adhesion. It’s therefore best to GENTLY use some fine grit sandpaper to remove it. Either press the wires gently onto the sandpaper and drag OR fold the sandpaper over the wires and pull. Try to rotate the wires between swipes to expose as much copper as possible. Be gentle!
Guys, I, while living, have achieved greatness at fixing headphones. Advice: after soldering & testing, REINFORCE the place where wire attaches to the plug! How? Superglue/liquid cement. Those glues are runny when you squeeze them out of the tube, but after a few minutes become gooey and like spiderweb. USE that ‘spiderweb’. Wrap it around the spot you soldered plus half an inch onto the wire (many layers, generously). Before that (before even soldering, put a spring from a pen onto the wire. Once first batch of ‘spiderweb’ solidifies, pull (screw) the pen spring onto the spot and add more spiderweb. Wait 24 hours for joint to become hard as a rock, slap some black insulating tape of shrink tubing on top – the end. You get headphone jack that NEVER breaks off.
Many thanks for this insightful article. You say at around the 4:02 mark the various colors of the wires and where they go, you say the outer pin is red, which outer pin would that be? If I look down on my jack I have two ‘outer’ pins on the left and the right. Does the red go on my right hand side pin or my left hand side pin? To also be clear, I am using a four-pole TRRS audio/mic jack so I have four colored wires: red, green, blue, and gold. I am assuming the gold goes in the same place as yours, the green at the top as you say in the article and the red and blue? Many thanks in advance for whatever answer is given.
What soldering iron model do you recommend? Or, at least, what minimum wattage? And I notice you use a tip with a fine point instead of a flat head — does that help keep the tip hotter? Also, do you use solder with or without lead in it? I know the non-leaded kind is safer/healthier, but for the life of me, I cannot get it to melt and work, so I just resort to the leaded kind. What do you use? I would love it if you guys would do a short vid just on soldering and soldering irons (I did not see in your article list but I might be blind). Thanks for the tip today! I am running out to my Radio Shack (the last one remaining in my area before they go the way of the carrier pidgeon) to pick up a 1/8″ jack and do it!
Ok, for people who have headphones with mic usually blue and green wire are + for the 2 headphones and red and gold twisted together is – for the headphones, separate clear red and clear gold are + and – for the mic, I find it easier than soldering to cut off the wire and connect to another wire with good plug.
i’m working on trying to fix a set of headphones for my little brother, but inside the wire casing i found red, green, and a blue enamel coated wires, and inside the copper ground wire was a white rubber coated wire as well. I imagine that the white will connect to the ground just like the copper one, but what about the colored ones? red for right website, green for left, and blue for mic?
The chord I”m repairing is a black 3.5mm (1/8″ headphone jack size) stereo female to female connector extension cord. This will work on. Mini stereo and/or aux; ear plug, headphone mini-stereo plugs, to include multiple number of devices. (Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, Cellphones, iPod’s, and Mp-players, Piano keyboards, Guitar amps and Automotive Stereo aux plugs etc.). The internal wires are color coded: + Red for Positive, – White for Negative Yellow for ground I think!.
People, after years of experimenting, I have finally found the BEST way to solder these tiny headphone wires 1)Firstly strip the plastic wire housing. 2) Next apply PAINT THINNER on each of the tiny wires. Wait for it to dry(2 mins). 3) Then grab a soldering iron, put some solder on it, and run the tip of the iron through the wire in a DOWNWARDS DIRECTION -the wire should start bubbling – this actually gets rid of the enamel coating as it sticks to the solder. Let this solder drip on the table/remove this solder. (If you use lighter to burn the enamel, you don’t actually remove the enamel – you just melt it, which is why people find it so hard to solder these wires. ) Now, you have actually REMOVED and TINNED the wire (which is impossible if you use fire to melt the enamel) At this stage you just need to connect the tinned wires together and solder.
Good article, and you should show us how to get most headphones apart without damaging them so you can get too the wires on the insides of the cans, as I’ve had a few pairs fail over the years that way from piss poor quality control, or hell even show people how easy it can be too make homemade headphone stand(I personally use an old wooden banana hanger with a larger hook to hold mine) for your desk so you have someplace too put your cans so they don’t get damaged.
I just tried this method out, but my right website keeps getting scratchy after soldering. I tried messing with the wires and found that when i adjusted the base where the rubber coating is still around the wires, the audio comes in and out. Are there certain wires that shouldnt touch certain parts of the jack? Is the wire inside the rubber bad, and i should trim it back further and start there? Any help would be appreciated!
As far as standards, I was repairing my headphones with a 3.5mm connector that had some pre-cut wire on it. (The headphones had a short cable that I didn’t want to make any shorter.) The headphones had red, white, and green and the replacement connector had red white and black. I ended up doing some research to see what wires did what depending on the wiring scheme.
Hi im new to this and dont know how to soder, but i have a question …. Instead of fixing the bottom tip of the wires and adding a new jack to it … How can i add an aux input to the headset?? Instead of having to fix the tips, so whenever my wiring breaks i can just buy a new aux cable like the dre beats headset idk if i explained that correctly . Cause i have a jbl headset that i love but there so hard to find n expensive but the wiring keep breaking n i dont want to throw them away I want to recycle them. N add a aux
DIY Tryin, I have a usb headset (Razer Kraken 7.1) that broke when i my leg got caught on the cable while rushing to my father’s franatic screams. I came back to find the gold plated usb-piece stayed in the pc but the cable got pulled. there were 4 metal pieces conecting the usb to the rest of the cable. they got cut, 3 at the usb and 1 pulled away with the cable which is bent and has a spike coming out. so essentially ruined, right at the rubber piece covering the usb port. How can i fix this? should if i cut the cable how am i going to put everything back together? Please help! P.S. Razer’s customer support has no intention of aiding anyone in anything and their purpose is simply to tell anyone that complains rightfully or not to go screw themselves in a civil manner and show the least interest in helping customers with their products.
This comment will probably not be seen. But if it does, can someone give me some info that I don’t know if it is important or not… So I replaced my cable on my DT 990 pros to a straight cable. I soldered on the new one. But I did not remove the black, white and red cable “isolator” or what you call it on the outside of the cable. Does this affect quality? So far my headphones sound the same as before so should I be worried?
Rule of thumb is to buy IEMs with a detachable cable. Years ago, this was a luxury as most IEMs with detachable cable were very expensive. Now with the advent of Chi-Fi, you can find this common feature on IEMs that go for as little as 20$. There is no reason to buy IEMs / Headphones that have a cable soldiered directly to the drivers.
In my case whenever i use my headset volume control ( on wire) It messes up the audio output and then audio only appears in one ear…like….sometimes left or right sometimes side. I have to adjust the volume wheel :/ just to make it work on both sides. Its so annoying! This is basically the problem with all headsets :/ Is this also the problem with audio jack ??? or its something to do with my headset volume controller ?
MY headset is USB. and I don’t wiggle the normal big wire, there is a little tiny wire connecting the left ear peace over to the over head on its way to the right side, for me the right side often doesn’t work BUT if I push on that little wire just right, it will work ( usually I have to hold it there, highly annoying ) sometimes I get lucky after manipulating it and it will work for either 20+ minutes and once in the past the whole day. I can’t open up the headset though because previously the headset broke ( twice ) where the ear peace fell off the rest of the headphones, so I glued them back, – This probably pushed the wire at some angle or something compromising its integrity of some sorts. 80$ headphones and no means to replace them 🙁
If anyone one wants to find this plug just search “DIY 3.5mm (1/8″) stereo Headphone Jack”. I was researching for a bit and this seems to get the most results for this plug. There are also screw types of this plug where you don’t need a soldering iron, you just need a small long screw driver, wire strippers, and a lighter to burn off the enamel. I see all the comments of people complaining about the price and burning their fingers; they should have spent 20 minutes researching or reading comments before hand.
And it doesn’t matter what brand of headphones you get if you snag that cord one time that’s it one of those drivers is not going to work and if both of them still do give it time they’re going to eventually go out. that’s why it’s good to take care of your headphones and to also not buy a cheap pair but if they get snagged real good you can hang it up and I have repaired headphones plug-in connectors or re-soldered drivers several times for myself and other people.😀🎧🎮
After spending many hours burning the wires and failing to get solder to stick to the wires, I found out that burning the wire to remove the enamel coating is actually a terrible idea. It’s best to just apply the hot solder directly on the coating without removing it, it will dissolve the coating with its heat and get a perfect meld with the wire.
Anyone else been searching all over the internet because they are a teenager and have broken their headphones multiple times and you don’t want to tell you parents because you just don’t wanna deal with the shit they are gonna rub in your face so you go searching all over the Internet to find a VERY simple way to fix your damn headphones and you just lose all hope because you know you have no fucking idea how to do this.
so this is my story how i break my headphones…. my precious headphones, so i have my new headphones i use it alot and i bring it alot and why my headphones are so precious to me because its brand new and its expensive and its a tokyo ghoul – kaneki on both sides of my head phones and i just brought it 2 days ago so just a minute ago i used my headphones listening to vocaloid songs then the internet stops so i have to lay it down in my bed, then i get my headphones cause just wanna cuddle and look at my headphones, then my dog get the wire of my headphones so i pulled it, i was really stupid at that time, then the internet was on again so i watch some articles at youtube and plug my earphone on, then my left ear cant here aything but the right ear had sounds so i plug to my other cellphones but still no change so im really sad but i dont want to buy another one, i dont want to replace my kaneki kun ever but i cant live like this forever but my mom said she will just fix it i headphone shop then i said ”when?” and she said “when im not sick anymore shes been sick for 7 days so ill be living with my headphone with only oneis running…nuuuu
anyone out there familiar with this?Cj0KCQjwj7v0BRDOARIsAGh37iqNj_aptzDGtUBUwZ2M3scHibaiJahqCt7B9_9TlUl8XtMCRHOv5nsaAhtgEALw_wcB bought about 5 of them used from thrift shops. like 2 bucks each,ALL have the audio out RCA R website dead,, the looked clean at purchase,the insides I removed with a biddy hex screwdriver,,is it the circuitboard that needs re heating? i do not have an instrument to test
My giant over-ear headphones with 50mm drivers had an inline mic, but all the headphone wires went through the mic’s circuit board, and the wire for the left website broke off the circuit board. After a few hours of trying to solder the tiniest wire to a circuit board, I gave up, desoldered all the wires, chucked the circuit board into my parts bin, and just directly soldered all the speaker wires to one another. It works wonderfully now! I did that 2 years ago and it is still holding up to this very day. however, by doing that, they don’t have a mic anymore, but the mic was crap anyways so I didn’t really care. Sadly, I might have to get new ones as the plastic diaphragm is starting to get crinkly and whenever I put it to max volume, I get terrible distortion as a result (it gets unbearably loud for me, and I always listen on medium volume). On medium volume though, it still works wonderfully. Also, they sound way better than beats and I got them for about 50 bucks 3-4 years ago. (if you are curious, the model # is JVC HA-MR55X). Ah, isn’t diy fun?
Problem I’ve discovered with some wired headphones (especially a beloved pair of Bose now wrecked) is the wire coating is rubber – and cats love to chew rubber cords. No matter where I hide the phones the little furry bastards zero in on them like radar…and chew. So I gave up and went cordless bluetooth Bose. Someday I might get out the soldering iron and fix my oldies…but for now I’ve successfully thwarted the furry rodents appetite.
OK, I need to put a new 3.5 jack on my Hyper X Cloud II, (I had 2 headsets break within 2 hours). What I need to know is if I need a standard jack or another one because there is a mic as well (TRRS? I think a bit new this stuff). Also anyone know any forums that are active that people talk and could share information, help and stuff with soldering small things, such as hardware, computures, console controllers, headsets, anything really?? I would love to solder more than I have and learn also build my proto type of a controller i’ve been working on that fixes all the problems I have with Scuf. Eventually hopefully starting a business and selling them.
Great article, but I have a fixed cord in my headphones which got shut in a door and the wires are completely separated. Any help in this situation? I love these headphones for many reasons, but the most important is that they don’t squeeze my head so hard that my eyeballs fall out! (actually I have occipital neuralgia) which causes blinding headaches if I have anything on my head that applies pressure) Thanks in advance I you can help me 🙂
Sir when i try to solder very thin HEADPHONE wires after removing their insulation coating with fire, the solder does not stick to the thin wires and it forms a kind of ball and fall down, please give me a tip which flux to use, i use just a standard one from one of electrical shop owner given me, i think the flux which i am using is not good. can you help me with my problem.
Okay, so i did it. I reconnected the cables inside and they play again. Whoo hoo and thanks. However, I must have done something wrong. After trying your “Nowhere Man” idea and also using a youtube right left test, now 1) both ears play right and left websites and 2) I played a song I recorded in the studio and now I only hear the reverb of my sax vs the complete sound. I should mention that I’m soldering the inside of the left earpiece which has two soldering spots in it. The rest of the instruments sound about right. But for different recordings, I’m getting this drop out of certain instruments – replaced by the underwater effect of reverb sound. I know that red is right and blue is left and that bronze is ground. I reconnected the blue to where it was before because it was the only one still connected when I went inside. Then I took the red and bronze and soldered them to the other spot together. What did I do wrong? Should the bronze wire not be soldered at all?
Also, I just fixed my wife’s expensive chi hair straightener, had a blown thermister, cost me 2 bucks and 15 minutes of time. Got me thinking, space heaters, irons, curling irons, etc…all have thermisters and people throw blown ones away but they could fix it cheap if they knew how easy it is. You should make a diy on it.
I have my beats solo2 for almost a year. Then yesterday the right part is not playing. I also need to play with the cord so that the right part can play, but not for long. I’m not good at this DIY type of tutorials so should I buy a new one? Or should I do this tutorials? Can anyone help me? Your help would be pretty much appreciated guys. Thank you!
This was awesome, I have a request. Since the new xbox one headsets are crap and have the same exact problem as what this article shows, would you guys be able to show how to fix one of those? Don’t know if that would impede on microsoft sufficiently robbing their customers by building such a bad product or not and don’t want you guys to get in trouble – however it would be an awesome post if you could.
Bingo, tried to fix my Sennheisers by just replacing the bad end that plugs into the headphone with another one from a previous cable that also had one go bad. I tried just twisting the bare wires together to see if that would work and was surprised when no sound came out at all. I didn’t realize they had a coating on them, just assumed the color was anodized. Now I got it working just like new, thanks for saving me $20.
Just did it, altho i reused the wire because the issue was my headphones, for some reason, they tied a knot inside, and that caused the wire to break. I just cut 5 inches off and re soldered using the same color scheme. Took me almost 2 hours but saved me 100 euros. Looks sloppy but for a first time it’ll pass i guess. This is a message to encorage people to fix their things if it’s relatively easy to do so. Say yes to fixing
I’ve a sennheisser cx-300ii precision earphones, which one side die and the other still fine, but, i notice there’s some fluid (like oil) coming out the point where the two cables converge(don’t know the name). Will the trick on the article help me to recover that one dead side or i’m fucked up and i have to throw them? 🙁
I am looking for a article how to replace wire cable for over the head telephone headset single ear with extension microphone. The telephone headset kxtga60 is for a cordless phone. The headset has a two ring 2.5mm plug and the wiring inside the earphone on the headset wires one wire plus ground and one other wire plus ground. I see the two ring as your article discussed as a TRS and your article calls out a TRRS to be with a mic. What would my connector plug be called if only two ring which is shorter in length than a TRRS but also wires to a mic? Please consider a new article or a link to help me. Thanks.
I have wires which are strands/threads of copper ( red, green and copper) around some kind of nylon stranded stuff in the middle. cant find any help on how to solder this kind… anyone? I tried to burn off the nylon thinking there might be a wire inside it but theres not. The outer copper wires arl just would together touching each other so I assumer theyre the insulation. despite this I tried just connecting them and obviously it didnt work. help??
I’m going to try this on my KOSS PortaPros that I got two christmas’ ago and use regularly. That’s an interesting soldering method. I remember from soldering projects as a kid that melting solder onto the tip if the iron and then rubbing it onto the connectors would have been bad form. If that because these connections are so small and delicate?
hi, my earphones’ wires have come apart from the button it was attached to and the button it attached to a wire which is attached to the jack. can u tell me how to solder it. also could u give your gmail address so that i could send u the earphone photos.my earphone model is HP RF824AA Stereo Headset
Ooo damn. Notice when they where talking about the enamel coding and he pulled out his lighter said you can just ..lighter lit . He starts laughing alot some reason probly inside joke. Dude looks at him laughing with wires and a flame doesn’t have a clue what is so funny backs up instantly like something wrong with this dude. Dude seriously had a look of concern on his face.
i want to repair my headphone. but, after cutting off the old jack and exposing the wires, i find myself with one uncolored, copper looking wire, and two colored with a green/bluish tint, perfectly identical. should i assume that the copper one is the ground and the other two the websites? or might this be a different thing? i dont want to solder and desolder it like 12 times to trial and error.
Read this its not that my head phone jack broke it is I was messing around with h my 2.1speakers and the cable for the audio was plugged in my phone and it was playing music and I had a other aux cable wail the the other cable was still plugged into my phone and so I plugged the satilite speakers to the sub and it made a loud noise and my phone stopped playing and I am thought my speakers burned but it was my phone headphone jack I think it was sending power to my head phone jack and it burned help please help
guys why is our head phones always break we did nothing all we do is hear and for some reason it broke it it’s wires break or did it cut almost every headphones break I hope in the future there iss people that can sell strong head phone that will break next 10 years If you cut it it will break if you mess around with it it will break but if you only just plug and hear something it will not break it’s annoying for me we waste too much money for strong headphones how can they all just be strong
Please correct your verbal description to match the illustration shown at 4:00 or annotate the article to indicate to use the illustration and not the audio description in the article. Alternately, you can add a close up photograph of the plug terminals with attachment descriptions. Your verbal description for the wire attachments does not match the illustration at 4:00. At least on my plug, the illustration is correct. However, the terminals for red and green are the same size. The suggested annotated photograph would be added after illustration ends at 4:06 and would show the terminal for the red wire on the right, the terminal for the green wire on the left, and the long terminal for the gold wire in the far back (outboard) between two terminals. Thanks for taking the effort to make this article, though.
Hi Dudes! I’ll Bet I can beat your record – I once rewired a set of Ross 226 (very good British headphones) SIX times over 8 years! By the way, don’t these ‘new’ laquered conductors SUCK! Lovely article lads and I LOVE your website name too! Keep UP the great work As we say in the UK ‘Keep On Keepin’ On! 10/10
always when i remove the insulation and then burn off the individual strands- the solder will still not stick to the tiny strands. I tried nearly everything there is. Other cables are easiest thing to solder. Audio/Headphone cables are always a huge pain in the ass- the strands literally repell the solder.
Just a wee something… the tool and the process is called “soldering” and Soldering Iron” (See Cambridge (English dictionary) or Collins (American dictionary) they are the same. Why do Americans insist on pronouncing soldering as soddering? The way Americans pronounce the noun or verb to anyone from the British Isles can be considered an ‘expression of anger’… or perhaps a speech impediment?
my Lenovo headset was such pretensciously made. The Ground wire was wrapped around the microphone wire for some stupid reason. I thought the ground wire was just fat, and i was so confused as to why there was only Three wires. Its like they made it that way just to fvck with anyone who tries to repair their headset.