DIY headphone repair

Not everyone has a soldering iron these days. But almost everyone has headphones, or even more than one. And as everyone knows, any headphones tend to die ... And, as always, at the wrong time. So today we will get out and you will learn how to fix headphones without a soldering iron. Of the tools you need just a knife, lighter and scotch tape 🙂

The main difficulty lies in the fact that you will need a knowingly working AUX - a cable or connector from other working headphones with a piece of wire. This is also the main sadness of this method. An AUX cable is cheaper to buy than headphones, but it does not have a microphone, so if you have a headset, you will have to accept the fact that it will be cut in powers and lose the microphone and buttons.

But how nice it is when non-working headphones start singing, and you can even survive the absence of buttons.

AUX cable now sold in any stall for absolutely ridiculous money. You need it to connect your audio device (phone, player ...) to an amplifier or car radio. Thanks to the Chinese brothers, now there are quite bearable laces starting from 0.5 $... The wire used in the article cost about a dollar. Well, a paper knife, a lighter and scotch tape, I think, are lying around in closets at every house.

So they scratched the bottom of the barrel, well, in the sense of the cabinets, found all the tools, drove to the stall for (beer) lace, what's next?

We cut it 5-7 centimeters from the connector or further. In short, not worth it. if you screw it up, then there will be no way to fix it later. And it is better when the connection point is located farther from the connector.

Especially for this article, the dumbest knife was found in order to try everything on yourself). So, the most convenient way is to cut the braid just like in the photo. You don't need to press down on the blade too much. Bending will cause the braid to separate itself. We turn the wire, making cuts and, when we have passed the circle, remove the braid. If it does not go, we cut it further.

I bare about 2 centimeters of wires, it will be easier this way, and the contact area is larger. Which will increase reliability.

The wires are covered with varnish, which must be cleaned off. First there was an attempt to clean the varnish with a knife.

Not the best way. The wires are very thin and with such rough mechanical stress they come off together with the varnish. Which is well facilitated by the dullness of the knife.

Tovarischi! We'll go the other way! You will need a lighter. Well, or at least matches.

To strengthen thin copper wires, manufacturers intertwine them with nylon thread. And nylon, as you know, burns well. It is possible, by the way, that the varnish also burns. Therefore, for a split second, we bring the end of the wire into the fire. It flashes quickly and lights up slightly. When 1-1.5 centimeters burns out, you need to blow on it, if it does not go out.

Varnish and nylon leave a small deposit that can be easily removed with a fingernail. As a result, we have undamaged wires cleaned from varnish.

The main thing is not to keep the wiring on fire for too long, because they can just burn out and fall off ((

We cut the wire with them. Usually, the headphone wires break right at the output of the connector, and in order to be sure to cut off the broken part, we cut it off 2-3 cm above the connector. It is possible and even higher - as you like.

There are obviously more than three wires in the headset - there are five of them. Two wires are responsible for the microphone, and three for the headphones. A loose gold wire (ground) was wound over a thin white microphone wire.

Now we are faced with an unbearable task - to twist the necessary wires together. Actually everything is simple! Three AUX - wiring to three headphone wires. In this case, it turned out that the colors of the internal wiring matched and, twisting the same colors, the headphones worked.

Read about how to determine the colors of the required wires in the article:

You can also use this simplest way: we plug our connector into any audio device that is at hand. The cassette player lay closest:

earth - golden (yellow)

left - blue (green)

right - red

But like any other rule, this one also has exceptions, especially when it comes to typefaces. For example, it happens that the right is green, the left is blue, and the red is a microphone, or there are also mixtures of colors. But GOLD is always EARTH. Mixes of flowers with gold, in most cases also earth.

Gold goes to both headphones, so it is common, through it the current seems to flow from each speaker to the common ground, and through the other two the current flows into the speaker. Well, that's if ooooo rude 🙂

Therefore, first of all, we twist all the gold ones. Now we twist the wires of the repaired headphones one by one with the wires of the AUX cable. The bottom line is that the red wire of the AUX-cable connector must be twisted with the red wire of the headphones and then the right earphone will sing. In your case, the colors may differ and it may be that red needs to be twisted with blue or somehow differently.

Have you identified? Fine! Now we cut off the unclaimed wiring or twist it with a common wire. I preferred to cut it off.

In order to ensure maximum contact, it is better to first loosen the two twisted wires, and then twist them tightly. This option is preferable to twisting each separately and then together.

So the wires are twisted, the headphones are singing - there is a smile on my face).

First, we insulate each twist separately. In addition to the insulation itself, this will also strengthen the connections. For some reason I did it with masking tape, probably lying closer than XD. It does not matter.

Now we will wrap everything together with wide tape, layers of 3 - 4. Or 5 - your business)

Usually in such cases, I prefer to spread the places of the twists so that they do not touch each other.

This is the long-awaited result of all our efforts 🙂 Perhaps it looked like something long, but this is not at all the case, 15 minutes will be enough for the whole process.

Well, as promised, no soldering iron was needed and everything was realized from scrap materials. And the headphones that didn't work have been fixed and are now singing again.

I propose to improve the technology a little, again without a soldering iron. You will have to buy a heat-shrink tube or thermocambric in an electronics store (also found in households). The bottom line is that this is a tube that, when heated, is able to shrink at least twice in diameter. Such a tube costs about $ 0.1 - $ 0.2 per meter.

We need two diameters, the first one - about 1 mm and the second 4-5 mm.

We put pieces of a thin thermal tube on our twists. Cut off the pieces with a margin.

Now you need to heat the thermocambric. I usually did it with a soldering iron, but since We agreed that I did not have it, and the story about how to fix headphones without a soldering iron, I had to get out.

Without hesitation, I just kissed the lamp of the table lamp. The method proved to be quite effective and the thermotubes shrank. Usually, while they are still hot, I additionally flatten them with my fingers. there is not always a tube of the required diameter at hand, and then they will stick out less.

Before twisting the wires, remember to put a 4mm thermotube on one of the wires. This thermotube must then be put on the joint and also squeezed with the heat of the lamp. In general, you can squeeze lighters on fire, but you can accidentally melt or set fire to excess.

I used a piece with a length of about 8 or even 10 cm. To strengthen the end of the thermotube was put directly on the rubber band of the connector.

The view has clearly changed for the better 🙂!

As you can see, this is not as difficult as it seems, and now you know how to fix headphones without a soldering iron. Good luck!

Perhaps such a repair will be enough for you for a long time. In any case, it will be safer to solder the twisted headphone wires. Making this one is not at all difficult. Read How:

Quite often, the headset has wire breaksuitable for the plug - according to experts, this is the most common defect that occurs due to frequent bends and various mechanical damage.

Inside the cable there are several very thin and delicate wires that can easily break if pulled or pulled. Is it possible to repair the headphone plug on your own, and what is needed for this?

To repair headphones with our own hands, we need:

• non-conductive glue or epoxy;
• a special heat-shrinkable tube is an alternative to electrical tape;
• old fountain pen;
• tester (multimeter);
• a soldering iron with a thin tip and all accompanying components (tin, rosin);
• side cutters;
• assembly knife;
• lighter.

It's best to use fabric glue if you haven't found epoxy, which only needs a few drops.

You can repair a lot on your own - here the main desire and ability to work with various tools. Let's consider the whole process in stages.

We bite off the plug with side cutters, stepping back from it by 2-3 cm.

We take out the headphone plug and a piece of old wire from the sealed connector - for this we simply cut the shell along the seam with a sharp mounting knife.

Now we can see where the wires are soldered to the plug - we take a photo for memory, so that later we don't confuse anything. However, there is standard wiringcoming from the headphones: copper (yellow) color - general, green - left earphone, red - right.

We remove the cut wire leading to the headphones from the varnish, clean and tinker the ends of the wire, connect the ground of each channel together.

We check the plug for a short circuit, after removing the remains of the tin. The layout of the channels is shown in the photo:

We take the old handle, disassemble it and use only the tip - we will make a new case from it for the plug we disassembled.

Bite off with side cutters of the required length heat shrink tubing, which, instead of electrical tape, will protect the wires from sharp bends at the very exit from the new plug.

We put the future body on the wire, then the tube, proceed to the final installation. How do you solder the wires so you don't mess things up? For this there is a photo taken earlier.

Before packing everything in a heat-shrinkable tube, we do a check - we put on the headphones, with the probes of the multimeter, alternately touch the contacts of different channels, while rustling or clicks should be heard. You can try to stick the unfinished structure into phone jack and turn on the radio. If you connect to an MP3 player to listen to music, you can check, using the balance, how each channel works.

If the test is positive, we put a tube on the place of soldering and, with the help of an open flame of a lighter, “squeeze” it so that it firmly covers the open part of the plug, as shown in the photo.

We dilute a few drops of epoxy, apply it to the tube, put on the case, and put it off for a few hours to fully polymerize the components.

That's the whole process of how to fix headphones from a mobile phone or laptop headset.

Users are often interested in whether it is possible to repair headphones of a more complex design when there are more wires inside? One plug can fit a different number of wires - it depends on headphone class:

• mono - 2 wires, it is difficult to confuse something here;
• stereo and mono - three wires and different connection schemes;
• stereo headsets - 4 pcs.;
• headsets or headphones with a microphone - 5-6 pcs.

Now we will tell you more about each class, except for the first one.

Each earphone must have two conductors in the same braid or in different ones - this is a plus and a minus. Sometimes at the end, when connected to the plug, the designers combine the negative ones into one bundle and they get 3 pieces at the output. To make it clear to all users, we present a detailed wiring diagram for the plug, where you can see exactly where the wiring needs to be soldered according to their color scheme.

There is no strict standard for coating with colored varnish. For example, the left channel wires can be blue, white, or green.

There are two different options here.

1. Ordinary headphones without a microphone and control buttons. 4 wires are connected to the plug: minus from each copper-colored speaker and plus (blue with red or green with red). For convenience, the cons are twisted into one bundle and as a result, three veins are obtained, which must be soldered to their specific places.
   
2. Headset with microphone... Here the plug has 4 types of contacts: one from each speaker, one for the microphone and there is a place for soldering the common wire or ground. Schematically, such a soldering looks like this:
   

Important! At first glance, the microphone wire looks like one strand, but in fact there are two of them: a very thin vein in a PVC sheath is wrapped on top with a copper wire with colorless enamel for protection.

In various types of headsets of the last class, from 5 to 10 separate veins can be found, so it will be much more difficult to navigate. The signal vein from the microphone is always braided in the same color, and the rest come in all sorts of shades. No specialist will tell you exactly which wire to solder where. How to replace the wire from the plug on the headphones in this case? Only this technique works here: we check each vein with a multimeter to determine whether it goes to the left or right dynamics, then we find the common ones, combine them into one flagellum.

You need to solder to the plug according to the diagrams that we showed, or find a separate diagram on the Internet that is suitable for your case.

Use this method to repair your headset or headphones to your mobile phone and save money from your home budget.

Headphones come in a variety of designs. However, the most common breakdowns for all types of headphones are similar. Most often, damage to one of the cores inside the cord occurs. This usually happens due to chafing or constant bending of the wire in one place. This is due to intensive exploitation.

The cord can also break at the plug. This occurs when there is strong bending stress on the cable at the base of the plug. The wire there may break if pulled sharply.

The wires break not only at the plug, but also in the headphone case. This can happen due to a strong jerk if the wire gets caught on something.

To repair a damaged wire, you will need a soldering iron, solder, flux and heat shrink tubing of a suitable diameter. All of these things can be bought at a very low cost in a store for radio amateurs.

First of all, you need to find the damage. This can be done literally by touch. Plug in your headphones, turn on the music, and begin carefully bending the wire from one end to the other.

The location of the damage will manifest itself as crackling, noise, or intermittent sound. Once you've determined the location, cut out the damaged piece of wire. It is not worth saving, cut off with a margin of one or two centimeters in each direction.

Strip the outer insulation so that the strands protrude a few centimeters from the wire. Then remove the insulating layer from the cores, exposing the metal.

Typically, copper conductors are coated with a special varnish, which must be removed for convenience and to improve the quality of the soldering. For this, a flux is used. It is applied to the wire, after which the varnish is cleaned off with a soldering iron tip.

Apply heat shrink tubing to the wires before soldering the ends of the wires.After you solder the wires, slide the heat shrink onto the wire connections. Heat it gently with a soldering iron to make it shrink. This must be done for high-quality insulation of the wires. In this case, using electrical tape is ineffective and inconvenient. The outer insulation can be replaced with either heat shrink tubing or ordinary electrical tape.

If the wire breaks at the very base of the plug, then you will have to cut it. The cut off plug must be opened by removing the plastic from it with a knife and nippers. When the plug is cleaned, you will need to solder wires to its pins in accordance with the color coding.

If you managed to open the plug case carefully, you can try to reassemble it in the reverse order. Epoxy glue can help you.

If the case is permanently destroyed, you can use electrical tape or heat shrink. Another option is to simply buy an inexpensive collapsible plug and solder the wires to it.

When the wire at the speaker breaks, disassembly of the headphone housing is required. The housing can be fixed with screws or latches. It is necessary to open the case with latches carefully so as not to damage the fasteners.

Having disassembled the case, you need to find the place of the cliff. The wire should be stripped and soldered to the contact pad. The repair is completed by assembling the case in the reverse order.

Thus, self-repair of headphones is within the power of anyone who is not afraid to pick up a soldering iron.

Surely each of you has come across a situation when your favorite headphones are out of order. What did you do in this case - throw it away? But that was superfluous, because the headphones are incredibly easy to repair. Do-it-yourself headphone repair takes place within an hour, provided that you do everything incredibly carefully, thoroughly and for the first time. So let's get started.

• Broken plugs at the end of wires are the most common cause of headphone failure.
• From frequent strong jerks, bends and other mechanical influences, thin wires are torn and broken. In this case, one speaker usually stops working, or both speakers at once.
• Sometimes there is a break in the common wire, and in this case the audio signal is distorted beyond recognition: the middle and high frequencies are almost completely lost. This is due to the fact that the left and right amplifiers of the phone or player are turned on in antiphase, and their output signals almost completely cancel each other out.
• It also happens that the stereo effect simply disappears.
• As a rule, there is no sound in the ears, but the microphone works. However, if there is a break in the microphone wire, the remote control on the cord stops working together with the microphone.

Important! If you have a need to use headphones, we suggest using the information from our review "Which headphones are best for your phone?"

Broken wire is the most common cause of headphone failure. To troubleshoot the problem, you will need:

1. soldering iron;
2. scalpel or nippers;
3. solder;
4. heat-shrink tubing;
5. rosin;
6. hot melt glue;
7. thread.

The process of repairing headphones with your own hands in this case looks like this:

• First, you need to determine the place where the break occurred, because the outer braid may not have visible deformations.
• You can find the broken wire by connecting the headphones to your phone or your PC. Next, you need to bend the wire from the plug to the speakers, when the wire is bent, sound appears in the speakers.
• Having determined the location of the break, cut out a section of the wire, stepping back a few centimeters from the break.
• After that, strip the wire from the outer rubber insulation and tin the wires.
• After tinning all the wires, put a suitable thin heat-shrinkable tube on each wire, solder the wires, observing the color frames, and use a lighter or a soldering iron to seat the heat-shrinkable tube.

Important! The heat shrinkage acts as an insulator, thereby preventing the wires from closing to each other.

• Now you need to ensure the reliability of our connection. To do this, you need to fold the wires with the letter Z and use a thread to bandage your connection.
• The last stage of headset repair has a practical and aesthetic value. Using a soldering iron, you have to carefully apply hot melt glue to your bandage.

Important! Hot glue will prevent the thread from unwinding on the other side, it will give a normal appearance at the junction of the wires. If you could not find black hot melt glue, you can put on a heat shrink of the appropriate diameter over the bandage.

If you love tinkering, try making your own headphones.

Before you start repairing the headphones with your own hands, namely the plug, carefully disassemble it. To do this, carefully use a scalpel to cut the body lengthwise. Plug breakages can be divided into problems that are associated with mechanical deformation:

• Fracture of the last link. Usually, this link remains in the counterpart of the mechanism and can be reached exclusively with tweezers and an awl for smd mounting. Such a breakdown is eliminated exclusively by replacing the plug.

Important! The rotation of the common link around its own axis is characterized by a change in sound perception to "metallic under water", as well as a decrease in sound volume. In this case, the repair is to solder the contact to the link and contact tabs.

• Breakdowns that are not associated with mechanical deformations of the plug - a wire break at the very base. It is “treated” by simply shortening the wire a few centimeters above the break and soldering all the elements in their places in compliance with the color policy.

If the input power is exceeded, the speaker is likely to go out of operation, as it burns out the winding wire. The integrity of the speaker winding is checked with a multimeter. For a fully working speaker, the winding resistance should be equal to the winding resistance of the second speaker + - 10%. Typically this value is approximately 16-100 ohms.

Important! In the case when the sound in the speaker itself is present, but with a wheeze, this means that the winding is in perfect order, but it either peeled off from the membrane itself, or it clings to the magnet. This can happen as a result of a shock, or due to excess power, the boiling up of the varnish inside the winding and the "hook" on the magnet. Part of the coil is also peeled off from the membrane.

Such repairs require extreme care. You can glue the coil to the membrane using super glue - apply it with a toothpick or a sharpened match. You can speed up drying by simply placing the speaker under the beams of a table lamp.

Important! To avoid jamming the diffuser, never connect the speaker cabinet with the diaphragm itself until the super glue is completely dry.

In the event that you have not managed to get your headphones repaired, and buying a new accessory is inevitable, follow the link and find out about the best headphone manufacturers.