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.

Adding a new jack plug

1. 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.
2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Unscrew the case of your jack plug and you'll see the three terminals for the three wires in your cable.



5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Test your headphones and you should be pleasantly surprised!
9. 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?