Any, even quite expensive headphones are a very short-lived accessory. But if you have one earphone junk, you accidentally broke the wire or broke the plug - this is not a reason to throw the headset in the trash.
Diagnose a problem
Before you solder the headphones, you need to figure out what is the cause of the problem. The most likely cause is the mechanical thinning of the wires inside the cable. As a rule, this is the place of their connection to the earphone or plug. In some cases, the cause may be a break in the wires as a result of severe pinching, shock, etc.
It is not difficult to determine which headphone wire is damaged - it is usually silent, or the sound is emitted from it with characteristic wheezing. For diagnostics, you can slightly sway the main cable. Look for malfunctions gradually, from the earphone to the plug. The fracture site is felt when bending 90 degrees of the wire around the thumb. If with such diagnostics the sound miraculously recovered, then the plug will have to be replaced.
The damage area (if it is not explicitly expressed) is detected with a 50% probability when parsing the earphone and wire connection and confidence in determining the faulty channel.
What is needed for repair
Just before you solder the wires from the headphones, check for the following tools and materials:
- solder;
- soldering device;
- rosin;
- technical knife;
- aspirin tablets (acetylsalicylic acid) - even expired ones will do.
How to solder headphones
Consider the first effective way:
- To play it safe, cut 1-3 cm more cable than the problem area includes.
- The desired channel is in color. Common - blue or yellow, sometimes just copper, without insulation. The right channel is green, the left is red.
- Remove insulation - more than 0.5 cm from the end of the cable. Polymeric easily and accurately removed with a construction knife. If it is varnished or made of paint, then a soldering iron will be required. You can also gently peel with a knife.
- The next item is tinning the ends with solder. Heat the soldering iron, take the tip of his "sting" a small piece of solder.
- Set the ends of the wires to the rosin and evenly distribute the solder over their entire surface. Wires are ready for soldering.
If you want to combine the procedure for removing varnish insulation and tinning, then you need an aspirin tablet. I would like to warn that such repairs should be carried out in a ventilated room, try not to inhale the smoke. Lay the wire on the tablet, then act with a soldering iron with a greasy drop of rosin. This combination completely removes the coating from the varnish.
The second method of soldering
The second way that tells you how to solder headphones with tinning wires with an emery cloth:
- Sandpaper grains should not be particularly large. The material itself will need a small piece.
- Apply a little rosin to the material, then place the wires on it.
- Warm it properly with a soldering iron, pull it out. The varnish on the wire will begin to soften.
- Repeat the procedure with stretching until the insulation is completely scraped off.
- After repair, insulate the area with heat shrink or electrical tape.
Some remove the insulation with the lighter’s spark, then remove carbon deposits with alcohol and flux.
Plug repair
How to solder the bitten wires from the headphones, we made out. The soldering of the plug is made according to a similar scheme, which has its own characteristics.
To get started, check out the connection diagram for conventional headphones.
How to solder a headphone plug:
- Cut the idle plug, with the wiring, carry out the same actions as described above. It is important to expose their minimum sections (2-3 mm), since the contact of bare wires in operation can lead to a short circuit.
- Thread the new plug through the headphone base housing.
- The connecting sections on the plug should be slightly scratched for easier soldering. In places where the cable is connected, they should also be irradiated.
- First, ground is connected (copper wire), then the left (white) and right (red) channels.
- Protect the area with electrical tape. To prevent soldering by accident, in the immediate vicinity of the insulated area, tie a knot on the wiring.
- Cover the area with the housing.
And this scheme is useful to those who repair headphones equipped with a microphone (headset).
How to solder headphones with a microphone? According to the same algorithm, only four wires must be connected to the plug instead of three.
Poor plug repair result
If during the testing you noticed that the speaker of one of the headphones continues to be silent, the cause of the problem may be as follows:
- poorly welded joints;
- trouble with the earpiece speaker - there is a high probability of wire breakage immediately near it;
- The problem is in the cable body.
With the first problem, the soldering process will have to be repeated, with the last - refer to the instructions at the beginning of the article (for repairing dangling wires). How to solder headphones with the second problem:
- Cut the wire next to the inoperative earphone.
- Disassemble the headphone - the self-locking design makes it easy to do.
- Strip, tin postings.
- Solder the earphone wiring to the cable body wiring, test, assemble in its original form.
In the presence of a soldering iron and elementary skills of working with it, the procedure for fixing the headphones is quite understandable and uncomplicated. Diagnosing the problem is also straightforward. The main reason is mechanical damage to the wires in the cable body or at the points of connection with the headphones and the plug. We will be glad if this article helped you return your headset to working condition.