Steampunk (ish?) Vintage Headphones

Not really a true instrucable as I didn't document all the steps involved. However I will try to give a reasonable account of the steps involved. This is by no means a definitive guide but an account of one man's struggle...

Ingredients:
Pair of vintage headphones - gift plus charity shop.
Pair of JVC Flat Headphones
Brass mahine screws and nuts
Brass wingnuts
Copper tube
2x boot laces - thick and not so thick
26awg / 0.4mm Teflon insulated silver plated copper cable*
3.5mm stereo Jack plug*
Heat shrink tube - both plain and glue lined*

* These are not strictly necessary unless you nick the original cable whilst attempting to sleeve it with bootlace therfore rendering it useless.

Tools:
Electric drill + bits
Soldering iron
Centre punch
Scissors
Screw driver

Step 1 Disasemble (& Clean)

I took the JVC headphones appart using a screwdriver and a hack saw. All you need to keep is the drivers, cable (unless you're making your own) and the foam ear pads. This might be a good point to label the cable - left and right - if you need to know which is which.

Cut and file the plastic surrounding the speakers untill they fit into the ear cups on the vintage headphones. Cut the plastic protective plate off the back in order to access the soldered on wires and de solder from the speaker.

Strip the old speakers out of the vintage headphones. The ones in these were held in with screws. The Bakelite ear cups screw on and off so its easy to get to the speakers. At this point I drilled cable entry holes into the bottoms of the ear cups. As i recal these were 4.5mm. You need to make sure you file the hole well to avoid burs slicing the cable when it goes in.

I cleaned the aluminium on the vintage headphones with wet and dry paper and lots of water, then metal polish. Not really necessary and sometimes I wonder if I shold have, but these were really dirty and I didnt fancy wearing them as they were. I do kind of miss the patina though.

 

Comments

[MurphyHarris]

around the plug, I would wrap sewing thread.

[brass eyes]

Thats a great idea, I had not thought of doing that.

I kind of like the rubberised look of the tube shrink. The first version recable (Which I abbandoned because the wires i used were too inflexible) had a copper Jack plug body. But i wanted to use this on the Line out lead that i made.