Sleeving Earphone / Earbud Cords with Paracord

Sleeve your earphone/earbuds with lightweight paracord so that they are less likely to come out tangled after removing them from your pocket.

This is a great mod to try if you want to enhance cheap earbuds/earphones or your cord is already broken somewhere (hopefully at the plug end, because it's usually difficult to figure out how to take apart the in-ear units if no one has already documented the procedure).

DISCLAIMER
Essentially, to proceed with this mod involves re-making the Y-junction where the common cord splits left and right. Having to cut and rejoin wires possibly degrades audio quality¹. It's likely that you'll notice one of the binaural output signals being noticeably weaker, especially as you lower the volume on your audio source, but this condition is common on cheap headsets to start, so this is why I do not recommend you try this on expensive gear and fail to like the results.

However, it's possible to not introduce more points of electrical resistance, by choosing to redo the existing solder points at either end, if you willing to perform a more laborious rebuild.

As another caveat, depending on how discriminating you are about your listening experience with in-ear headsets, this mod might not be worth it. Paracord, being made of rigid nylon, will audibly and crisply chafe (therefore transferring this sound to your ears), but the use of a clip should reduce this by keeping it from sliding against the sides of your face and any hard fabric you may be wearing.

See the last step of this ible for more notes.

Step 1: Gather Materials

Materials:
• Paracord of your choice. I assume the larger the diameter the less prone it is to flexing and therefore tangles/knots, but there isn't any significant diameter variety.
• Sacrificial earphones or earbuds with a cord thin enough to be easily thread through the outer jacket of paracord. The ones used here are Sennheiser CX55 In-Ear Headphones.
• Heat Shrink Tubing of various diameters
• Electrical Tape; depending on your earphone design you may have to tape the ends so that the heatshrink tube does its job of holding onto something with the paracord in place.
EDIT: Actually, super glue is more effective than tape. After a few months tape will tend to fail. I guess some sort of plastic cement might work, too.

• Small alligator clip (optional). I recommend clipping the cord to a shirt so that the headset remains in the ears and the cords freely contacting only air, despite whatever odd looks you may get from onlookers.

Tools, etc:
• scissors or knife
• wire cutters/strippers
• pliers
• lighter (preferably a butane, torch type)
• soldering iron, flux, solder
• epoxy

Comments

[chinnerz]

Awesome man! I ended up doing this to mine this week.

[JellyWoo]

Very cool idea. What diameter paracord did you use?

[15zhangfra]

there's only one diameter of paracord. if you think standard paracord is a bit too thick (1/8 in) then you can try tether or hammer cord, which is (3/32 in), you can get both at countycomm, or any army/navy surplus store or website

[Stonewall]

I sleeve cables all the time for work and have found the best way to terminate the ends of the sleeving is to use adhesive lined heat shrink. I use 3:1 ratio heatshrink, select a size that is just large enough to fit on or you can strech it a bit if needed with some long needle nose pliers. This way you get a nice tight fitting heat shrink and the sleeving is bonded to the wire when you overlap it.

[alphadog0309]

Another easy way to do this is to push the paracord onto a straw and bunch it up slightly then pass the wire through the straw and push the paracord off the straw onto the wire once you reached the end of the wire... if that makes any sense...

[Steve Potman]

This is a really cool idea. I like it a lot. I want to try this out and see if I can do it as well. I got most of the tools/materials and I had to order the others. I ordered the rest of the tools, heat exchangers, some tubing and more during the process of getting the tools so that's always a plus. Thanks again!

[im_tux]

you can actually fully submerge headphones in distilled water and then clean the paracord... as long as you let them dry well they still work... I really like the idea of the shrink tubeing.... and if you want the headphones to not react to the paracord filtering the wind, try wrapping them in electrical tape before sleeving them... thats the only solution i have

[John Frum]

Or you could save yourself a lot of time and effort by getting a pair that already has a cloth or nylon cord, such as the Lenntek Sonix or Sonix 3. http://www.amazon.com/Lenntek-Earbuds-Braided-Microphone-SmartPhones/dp/B002AJL12U/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=wireless&qid=1278132225&sr=1-4

[Pimpalicous]

Man, threading my ipod wires through the rope was a pain. Also i figured out why they were shorter then you had expected. The rope bunches as you thread it through, people may need to grab one end and pull the roper so it expands over the cord. Mine ended up to be about half the length of what i had expected. Nice Tut.

[Spokehedz]

"Having to cut and rejoin wires degrades audio quality." If you use high-quality silver solder, you will notice less of this effect. also, keeping all wires the same length and taking your time with the soldering will also help a lot.

[Vermin]

I find this hard to believe. Sure 60/40 solder has about six times the resistivity of copper but the joint is so small and the currents so low that the power loss should be unnoticeable (in a properly wetted and mechanically secured joint). I have repaired many headphones with tin/lead solder and have never noticed a reduction in sound quality. Maybe I just don't have golden ears?

[dyril]

Consider my recent soldering of a new stereo jack to my audio player, I guess my soldering skills have improved vastly. I didn't know of using flux/cleaning of the tip until years later, so the quality drop should indeed be little if you're soldering correctly.

[Spokehedz]

if you have to ask, then clearly you do not. JUST KIDDING! I have only worked with audio very little, and I do not claim to be any sort of expert on the issue. With that said, my friends who are into audio (the kind of guys who buy the $500 power cable for their vacuum-tube amp) SWEAR that using silver solder lends to better sound. I use it only because they said so, and since a small tube of ball solder with gel flux will last me forever for the small amount of audio work I do from time to time. I do know that the reason his channels drop out on one side is because one channel is higher impedance than the other--which is tricky to get right, because of the incredibly fine solder work that is required. in short, no. I don't know if the silver solder really does work that well, but when you are using such a small amount--why not use the 'good stuff'?

[zoneykid]

http://www.takefiveaudio.com/ Has nylon cable sleeving by the foot and other DIY audio cable stuff. Also from what i understand, you could also just buy a new 1/8th" mini-plug and solder to that to retain audio quality.

[dyril]

This suggestion is feasible if your original cord is of the "zip" type for sleeving each of Left and Right after separating the pair (assuming the original Y-junction could be cut away), and then sleeving both at once through the common sleeve portion (which could be trickier than one rubbery cord given a tendency to twist/bulge), so those are the implications of this approach.

[Hello Kitty]

Really cool - now just to get my hands on some paracord! 5***** (don't you love your sansa c200? :)

[dyril]

I love my Rockbox'd sansa c240 so much that I'm sick of having to resolder the left channel's terminal of the SMT stereo jack :[ Maybe another instructable comes if I manage to more permanently fix that somehow...

[Spokehedz]

nothing like soldering the headphone wires directly to the contacts, and using epoxy to secure the wire to the opening left by the jack. 100% trouble free audio since.

[dyril]

Since I was using the OEM earbuds for some time and disliked having to repair those so often (the cords were so weak), I ruled that out. I tend to favor having options, so I fixed it by replacing the jack (and posted that as another instructable! ;)

[Spokehedz]

I bought some really expensive earcandy buds for cheap with a broken connector... while it was shipping to me the jack on my player broke... two birds with one stone and all that. :D

[Hello Kitty]

Ooooh, could you do an Instructable on that? I've known for awhile that is what's wrong with mine, but was too afraid to mess with it. Pretty please with a cherry on top?????

[nikul.padhya]

I must say "The Perfectionist " Awesome. I tried to pull this long time back but couldn't finish it. and This guide shows me I should get back to work again.

[bowmaster]

Dang, these look really nice. I need to do this.

[benhudson]

Nice :) When I get around to putting silver cables on my Koss Portapros (buy low, mod high :D ) I'll probably do this as well.

[hijinks]

You could always use shrink tube at the Y-junction it should keep the para cord together.

[dyril]

On a prototype where I joined the ends with superglue, before covering with heat shrink alone, it failed. When I use my cord, it is prone to tugging by accidental snags.

[rimar2000]

Very good idea. My wife's headphones always get tangled, I will propose this method. Isn't possible to do that without cutting the cable? Maybe using thicker paracord...

[dyril]

You could unsolder the wire at the speakers, but it's painful to figure out how to take apart the plastic when there's so many different models of headsets out there; I'd check if there's an existing guide for dismantling. There are surely some on this site. Also, I always assumed paracord only came in nearly one size, from all of the lanyardwork photos I've seen.

[bADiTCH]

OMG! This is brilliant, I remember my field headset when I was in the service was like this. I can't believe it never clicked in my head. Great job! I'm working on one with white paracord and clear heat shrink tubing.

[power]

aha,time to do this on my earphones :D

[tubanator-2.0]

any ideas on how to do this with out cutting my headphons cause im on my last pair that still works. thanks also this is really awesome

[bojopopo]

these are awesome!!! i want to make some white ones for my ipod

[biometod]

Thanks. good staff

[sammyBoy]

Nice instructable and a GREAT idea. Doing this with my favourite headphones, wish me luck!

[Twotim221]

I had this EXACT idea during the paracord contest, glad too see it works.

[Diabloscope]

HMM this is a good idea , i have 6ft of sleeving from some Broken DHC audio cables . woven carbon fiber ... Great Idea !!!!

[killerjackalope]

Check out the forums, it's in the featured I'm running a headphones contest for a 3 month pro membership, that said getting featured means you just got one, however enter if you like.

[Meggeler]

Excellent, thank you. I have a few pairs that already have a corded wire & never (well, seldom :) tangle. I have better sets I'll try your process on. Thanks again.

[bobert610]

I LOVE THIS IDEA. i tried it with my skullcandy buds and they lasted twice as long as my previous pair 5.5 out of 5 STARS MAN> THNX!!!