
How to repair your broken earbud headphones
Last updated: December 5, 2009.
Earbuds don't last long—in fact, hardly any of the
headphones I've
ever bought have survived more than a couple of years. Why? Because the
cables almost invariably weaken and break through constant movement.
Some headphone manufacturers use more durable cables and reinforce the
places where the cables join the jack plug and the phones themselves
but even with reinforcement cables can still break sooner or later.
When this happens, most people furiously throw their headphones in the
bin and reluctantly buy another pair. But if you can use a soldering iron,
it's actually quite easy to repair them.
Photo: An inexpensive pair of earbuds will usually fail sooner or later, either where the cable meets the phones or where it joins onto the jack plug.
Please take care!
You'll need to use a knife or scissors, a burning match, and a hot
soldering iron.
Please take appropriate safety precautions with these hot, sharp, dangerous things, solder only
in a well-ventilated room, and so on.
If your headphones are broken, you may not worry too much about taking a risk trying to repair them.
But be warned: it is possible (though unlikely) that you will damage delicate components in your headphones if you don't
solder carefully. Use a heat sink or apply the soldering iron for short periods of time to reduce the chances of heat damage.
It's also possible that if you don't repair your headphones correctly, you could damage
any audio equipment you connect them to.
We accept no responsibility for any accidents, injuries, or disasters that result from your using the information here.
You follow these instructions entirely at your own risk.
Adding a new jack plug
- Using a pair of scissors or a knife, cut off the old jack plug.
If it's a molded plug, throw it away—it's no use.
- You will need to buy a new jack plug to replace it. The item you
need is called a 3.5mm stereo jack plug and you can buy it easily
online from an electronic parts shop or from an electronics store if
you have one nearby.
(Search now on
Google
or eBay.)
Make sure you get a stereo one; mono plugs look very similar.
The one I have here has a screw-on outer case and
a clamp at the top for securing the cable in place.
The clamp is a good idea unless you want to go through this
exercise again in a few weeks time!

Photo: A replacement jack plug like this is a fraction the cost of a new pair of headphones.
Unscrew the case and you'll see three terminals to which you'll reattach your cable.
- Prepare your cable. A headphone stereo cable has two cables
running through it, one for the left channel and one for the right. These
are usually colored red and green. Each of these cables is surrounded
by copper wire (the ground). Strip the red and green cables back so you
have about a half inch to an inch of bare wire. Keep the red and green
wires separate, but twist the two sets of copper wire together—so you
have three wires instead of four. Now strike a match and briefly heat the ends of
all three wires to burn off any insulating covering. If you don't do
this, the wires won't make a proper electrical connection when you solder and your
headphones won't work.

Photo: The wires inside a stereo cable. Strip the cable back so you
have about an inch of wire. Join the two copper ground wires together so you have three wires
instead of four. Then burn away the red and green insulation (or whatever it is) with a match
ready to make a good electrical connection.
- Unscrew the case of your jack plug and you'll see the three
terminals for the three wires in your cable.

- Now solder the three wires to the three terminals. The
copper-colored ground wire (shown orange in the diagram) goes to the large outer terminal (which often
joins to the cable clamp at the top). The green wire goes to the central terminal.
The red wire goes to the remaining terminal.
- If you get the red and green wires mixed up, your headphones will still work but
the left and right channels will be switched over.
Sometimes it can be hard to know if you've got this right. One way to check
is to listen to some music that you know plays certain passages or instruments mainly on
the left or the right channel with speakers or other phones. Then check your work by listening to the same music with
your repaired phones.
-
It can be quite tricky to support such a small jack plug while you're soldering it. Two precautions to note. First, whatever you
do, DON'T under circumstances hold the bottom of the jack plug while you solder the top it: the heat will
travel through the electrical pins in about a second and burn your fingers.
I know—I've made this mistake more than once! Either use a vice/vise or some other method of holding the plug securely to an old table. Second, make sure the three wires are well clear of one another when
they're soldered. If they touch anywhere, you'll either lose sound in
one or both of the headphones or get mono instead of stereo.
- Test your headphones and you should be pleasantly surprised!
- If it doesn't work, try again. You can always clean up the jack plug by melting old solder off with the soldering iron;
and it's easy to shorten your cable a little bit more.
Fixing the cable at the headphone end
This is much trickier than replacing just a jack plug, but it's
essentially the same operation. Even if only one headphone or earbud is
broken, you should really cut the cable off both headphones or
earphones, shorten it by however much you need, and then repair both
phones. If you don't do this, you'll have one of the stereo wires
slightly shorter and carrying slightly more current than the other and
that can damage both your headphones and whatever they're connected to.
Exactly how you take the headphones or earbuds apart varies from
brand to brand. Take a look at our main article on
headphones for some reference photos that may help.
Can't make them work?
Maybe it's time to take a look at our buyer's guide to headphones?
Text copyright © Chris Woodford 2008. All rights reserved.
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