Replacing the jack on a pair of headphones

Step 5 Wireing it up

Your Headphone jack should have 2 pins, and a bigger one at the base

BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING slide in the jack cover, any heatshrink and other stuff you want on the wire.

The big one is ground - the other two are tight and left channels. I prefer passing the wires through the inside, then soldering the outside . Clamp the jack pointing away from you, with the Ground connecter below. The small pin to your right is right, the one to the left is left. Solder these in place.

Comments

[Isurvival]

I have bought a very good headphone,but the cable broke at the jack, and i would like to ask, if i change the jack, will it affect the quality of the sound? I would like to know, before i change it...thanks for your help in advance-very good instructables by the way :)

[faileas]

In my personal experience, as long as its done properly, it should not in any substantive way.However there are folk who believe cables and jacks make a major difference, so i suppose YMMV. I do believe there's no major change in sound quality from my experience, but i did not have the chance to do proper before and after testing, or comparison between different jacks.

On the other hand, i'm certain the headphone will sound better with a working jack, than a broken one ;)

[Isurvival]

Thanks for the info, and the help-this instructible is really helpful for the ones like me, who don't really know how to deal with electricals, and for sure, it will sound better with a working jack than without :D

By the way, my granfather helped me a bit with the soldering, and it works like the new :) I'm very happy adout it, so thanks again

[Freak_09]

Em, I have a problem....my earphones cables are too thin, they tend two broke if I twist them the wrong way. But I tried and they do work when connecting them to the jack, so, I was thinking about using an ipod earphones cord to: 1) make my other earphones cord longer and 2) make the jack connection not so fragile. What do you think? can it be done?

[faileas]

If its too thin to solder, its really not going to be the effort to fix.

I suppose you can splice, or replace (it dosen't really need to be headphone wire, any sufficiently thin wire will do)

for the jack connection, i totally reccomend getting the metallic sorta jack, and using heatshrink and hot glue for extra strength

[Freak_09]

I agree with you it may not be worth fixing it, but, to tell you the truth, I'm kind of a maniac and got these black ladybug shaped earphones....so I don't really want to dispose of them so easily. I've read other instructables where you unsolder the wire from the speakers and solder a new one, but for this you need to open up the speaker case, which seems rather imposible with mine. Argh....should give it a try?

[faileas]

If it is impossible to open, it is badly designed!. on the other hand, if you look carefully, there almost always is a way to.

You could possibly cut the old cable VERY close to the headphone, have some other wire just as reinforcement, and heatshrink, maybe.

if its not fused in place, there's also always a peg or 3 you can carefully dislodge to take it apart, or screws. If you have nothing to break cause its already broken, a little courage, a little patience, and a little work can always save the day

[shaneomacmcgee]

think its time for a new third hand? lol

[faileas]

She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts ;). And ya, at some point i'll be budgetting for a new one. Funny thing is i'd soaked the old thing in WD40 for a while. It STILL looks totally rusted, but is smooth