Welcome Lifehackers! Looks like another one of my posts has been lucky enough to be featured on Lifehacker! Very cool. I hope you enjoy my how-to.
About a year ago I picked up a pair of Shure E2C headphones. Well worth their somewhat expensive price, I use them all the time. They provide a ton of isolation, so they’re great on the bus and when flying.
But, in my experience, the actual headphone plug leaves a lot to be desired. Within about 8 months of regular use, I started getting the traditional crappy connection problems you get with cheaper headphones. After a few months of constantly trying to tweak the connector in order to get a good connection, I finally decided to replace the connector myself.
The final product was quite impressive. For more details, read on.
Step 1: Acquire supplies
Obviously you’ll need a pair of faulty headphones. And a new connector. I picked up a gold-plated 1/8″ connector from Radio Shack for about $3.99. I could have bought the standard chrome one for a buck or two cheaper, but in this situation, “bling” is worth a few extra bucks.
Step 2: Strip off old connector
First step is to remove the old crappy connector and strip it down to it’s bare wires.
Strip off the main cover for an inch or so, and then strip the individual wires. They will be incredibly tiny. This is where it pays to be really good at soldering. I won’t elaborate, but I’m not that good at soldering.
Step 3: Solder on the new connector
Now solder on the new connector. This is where reading becomes important.
According to Wikipedia, the three connections on a headphone jack are as follows:
- The “Tip” (the end of the connector), which handles the left stereo channel. For me this was the blue wire, which I connected to the shortest terminal.
- The “Ring” (the first segment of the connector), which handles the right stereo channel. This was the red wire, which I connected to the middle terminal.
- The “Sleeve” (the second segment of the connector), which is the common ground. For my headphones, this was the conductor with no insulation on it. This was the wire with no insulation, and it connected to the ground terminal.
It may or may not take you some experimentation to figure out what wire is which channel in your headphones. Once you figure it out, solder or screw the connections down to each channel.
Step 4: Reinforce the connection
This step actually came later for me. At first I just soldered up the connections and used the plastic sleeve that came with the connector, but after a week or two my connection was flakier than the original. The tiny wires were moving around too much within the connector. So I re-soldered my connections and then encased the whole deal within a protective layer of cheap two-part epoxy.
Afterwards I waited for the epoxy to dry, and then shaved it down small enough to fit into the screw-on connector.
I’m very happy with the final results. After the epoxy modification, I’ve got a connector that is rock-solid and as good if not better sounding than the original jack. And I get tons of great compliments on how cool the “bling” connector is.
There you go. About $5 and less than an hour’s work to save a $100 pair of headphones. I hope you find this as helpful as me.
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@thomas Yep, that’s the one.
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cool
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does this work the same for double cords, like the cord for a Denon AH-D210
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hey chris finding your post on how to connect a new plug practically saved me from panic the night i found my expensive JBL headphones is only working in the right ear. however, i never soldered or cut up any wires in my life and hesitated to do anything. i dont live in US so i cant buy the gold plated plugs but i will try and get my friend in the US to buy it for me. but i want to make sure i will buy the right connector and do the cutting up properly. i read from the post jake made above that he just used a screwed on plug. what is the difference between the two other than one needs soldering and the other doesnt? which one works better? if you can reply me by email that would be great! thanks
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Does anyone know if the Denon C700’s have insulated wires inside the outer covering and not painted wires like some other headphones?
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Just replaced the plug on my C700’s. The wires are painted. Just burn it off and it works fine with both screws and solder.
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Pingback from Dougy Mak’s Blog » going gold baby! on October 30, 2008 at 1:13 pm
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does this procedure work for skull candy headphones as well??
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@wilmer Yep, should work with Skull Candy headphones, but if yours are anything like the cheap Skull Candies I got, the wires are super thin and will be very hard to solder.
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I’m confused. You said three connections. I see FOUR wires: one red, one blue, and two uncolored.
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Nevermind; I figured it out. I had to twist the two uncolored wires together. Thanks.
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How would you do this with headsets that come with a mic like the Ultimate Ears super.fi 5vi?
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Great stuff, I’ve been looking for a page like this!! thank you.
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would this work with replacing the mini jack on my apple pro speakers with a regular sized jack?
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@emma – Yes, probably. By “regular-sized jack” do you mean a 1/4″ jack, or are you trying to replace a 1/16″ sized jack with a 1/8″ one?
They sell both at Radio Shack and most electronics stores.
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before i found this information, i figured Radio Shack would probably have what I needed for this. I picked up a 2-pk of 274-0284 to repair two sets. One is a philips sbc hs430, the other one, unfortunately i can’t find a name on and i think its a litter better since there are hinge-like things beuilt into it – both are behind the ear, with just a wire running between, no formed headset. I’m trying to do this on the philips first because the jack was ripped off the rest of the unit.
Is the colored stuff the wire, or is it inside of that? There are three holes on the jacks I got; one on a short thiner stem, one on a thicker longer stem (same height as the first one), and one hole about half way up on the main shaft. I’ve tried various combinations, but can’t seem to get a stable, consistant sound. Do I need to solder it first to maintain any decent constant sound level?
thanks – sorry for the rambling.
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