wiring a speaker: which wire do i solder where?

I took apart some old headphones for the speakers unfortunately the wires pulled away from the soldering when dismantling. So i have a REd wire and a Brown wire which contacts do i solder them to?

Picture 3 is a simple image of what the back of the speakers looks like, each contact is labelled with a different colour so if you know which contact goes to which use the coloured label to say whether it goes with the red or the browen wire.

for example- red wire to purple contact,
brown wire to red contact.

thankyou to anyone that helps
Mdog

Comments

[AnotherBrian]

It would be best to use the outer pads. The reason headphone speakers have double pads like that is that the hair-thin coil wires are soldered to the inside set and glued down so that when the leads from the device are soldered on you don't inadvertently damage or desolder the coil wires. You will see the pads of the left(and right) set are connected by a zig-zag trace. This connects them electrictly but cuts the thermal transfer so you can easily melt only one pad at a time.

[mdog93]

So i gathered that the thin wires from the coil are connected to the inner pads and i should solder on the outer pads, so therefore shouldn't i be able to see a wire or something connecting the inner pads to their corresponding outer pads? In one place i can see a wire thats detatched and another very fine wire going between the inner and the outer pads but i don't know if that is what it's doing there. Iy's just confusing me so much every time I try and do a simple project i mess it up and i can't seem to find the solution whereas i'm sure if it happend to someone else they would find the problem straight away and be able to sort it. It's not as if it's even a hard thing to do, i was only removing the speakers from the casing. It aggrevates me so much becaues i end up with lots of stuff which weren't really needed but now they just lie there ruined.

[lemonie]

You'll find that the the blobs of solder are joined in pairs: red+yellow purple+green. If you look carefully you'll see that the speaker coil is eith connected to red and green or yellow and purple by very thing wires. Solder your wires to the other blobs.
I'd be inclined to agree with GuardianFox, but technically speaking it does matter for correct stereo reproduction. Yes they'll work either way, and you won't notice the difference.

L

[mdog93]

ok i can see thin wires but they disappear out of sight so i cant see which they connect to but i think the middle ones, i had a play with connecting it and pressing the wires onto the contacts but i had no luck in gettin it to work, i'll give it another go. cheers mdog

[lemonie]

It looks like the middle. If you look at the left hand speaker you can see the wires coming from the speaker coil and around to the terminals through that small gap in the edge of the black plastic casing. If these have been damaged as well, they're "knackered". L

[mdog93]

i thught that myt hav hapend but thers no way of knowin is ther?

[lemonie]

Well, you might be able to see, or you might not. If you've got a multimeter you can test for resistance.

L

[mdog93]

No i haven't got a mutlimeter, i might know what's wrong know i need to ask AnotherBrain something else first though.

thanks

mdog

[lemonie]

He's right, which is why I also mentioned the solder points initially. If one thin wire has come off you might be able to solder it back on. But if it's broken you'll be a bit stuck. L

[orksecurity]

Note: If you want these to work as stereo, and assuming you have a TRS three-contact "phone plug" on the other end of the cable, the tip of the plug is one channel, the "ring" is the other channel, and the "sleeve" (the rest of the plug) is common between the two. As long as you are consistent about wiring the headphones (the sleeve connects to the same terminal on both speakers, tip connects to the other terminal on one and ring connects to the other terminal on the other), you should be fine. Similarly for mono: if you only have two wires, make sure the same wire goes to the same contact for each speaker. (If you get one speaker wired backwards from the other, you can get some really unpleasant effects as frequencies partially cancel out at different places in the room.)

[lemonie]

More explanation than I was prepared to go into, so thanks for adding what I was thinking about (stereo speakers) L

[DELETED_GuardianFox]

Lucky you... it doesn't really matter! The speakers will work either way. If you want to test them first, plug the other end into your ipod or some other handheld noisy gadget and touch the wires to the contacts. You won't be electrocuted, I promise.

[mdog93]

kool, but still i'm guessing it's either of the outer two not the inner two contacts?