How to Fix Broken Headphone Cables 

My left ear really enjoyed this video.

The whole thing should have been filmed close up

Both sides of my headphones work again! Thank you, I soldered it myself and it worked. No more cutting out on the left side. First time soldering too.

I watching this with no sound. Guess why.

This is a good video but they forgot to mention a fundamental point. When you strip your cables you will essentially be left with four wires (for a set of standard headphones without a mic). Before burning off the coating cut your red 'pair' a little bit shorter so that you know which is which. The two uncoloured wires are grounds and will eventually be soldered to the gold leg. It makes it easier to burn the grounds first so that you can twist them together ready to be soldered onto the gold leg. Then burn the coloured wires and then length of the wire will let you know which is red and which is green. I originally burnt my wires and twisted the red with its ground and did the same with the green and had little to no sound which is probably what a lot of people here are finding. Hope this helps 👍

oh wow, didn't realize it was this simple. I have a headset with a broken jack sitting in my drawer for over 4 years now. There was this white fiber type thing inside with the different wires. This video has inspired me to attempt to repair it once more!

the link to the jack doesnt work guys

Every video. "Very easy to fix it." Totally

watching this in 2020 and watching him sneeze caused a "corona" scream in my head.

Gday. Why is it 99% of ALL headphone repair videos lacking the wiring information to connect the wires on the EAR BUDS , they all spend time at the end that connects to the source, but no video shows the wires from each ear bud, espically for studio headphones

I just fixed my favourite earplugs with my first ever soldering. Thanks for the video :)

Excellent vid, the first one I found on the subject that actually tells you which wires go to which terminal on the jack!

The burned enamel residue and, if you burn for a long time, the copper oxide are very good insulators AND very good at preventing solder adhesion. It's therefore best to GENTLY use some fine grit sandpaper to remove it. Either press the wires gently onto the sandpaper and drag OR fold the sandpaper over the wires and pull. Try to rotate the wires between swipes to expose as much copper as possible. Be gentle!

I have a mic'd gaming headset. I cut off the 1/8" connector, stripped the wire to replace the faulty connector, and found one blue and one green wire, both very fine, and a fatter stranded black wire. Can you tell me what's up with that?

The tip about using a lighter to burn the coatings is very useful, thank you. I just cut a different cable with a good jack and tied the wires together - no soldering :)

It would help if I could hear what your saying

I an watching this with broken headphones so I couldn't hear no shit.

Wow. After all these years I stumble upon Patrick Norton again, yey! So happy that the TechTV crew is still kicking it strong on youtube!

Guys, I, while living, have achieved greatness at fixing headphones. Advice: after soldering & testing, REINFORCE the place where wire attaches to the plug! How? Superglue/liquid cement. Those glues are runny when you squeeze them out of the tube, but after a few minutes become gooey and like spiderweb. USE that 'spiderweb'. Wrap it around the spot you soldered plus half an inch onto the wire (many layers, generously). Before that (before even soldering, put a spring from a pen onto the wire. Once first batch of 'spiderweb' solidifies, pull (screw) the pen spring onto the spot and add more spiderweb. Wait 24 hours for joint to become hard as a rock, slap some black insulating tape of shrink tubing on top - the end. You get headphone jack that NEVER breaks off.

Thanks guys - gonna give this a shot. Now have - count them - 3 broken headphones and I'LL BE DAMNED IF I'LL BUY ANOTHER SET UNTIL I FIX AT LEAST ONE OF THESE!

What soldering iron model do you recommend? Or, at least, what minimum wattage? And I notice you use a tip with a fine point instead of a flat head -- does that help keep the tip hotter? Also, do you use solder with or without lead in it? I know the non-leaded kind is safer/healthier, but for the life of me, I cannot get it to melt and work, so I just resort to the leaded kind. What do you use? I would love it if you guys would do a short vid just on soldering and soldering irons (I did not see in your video list but I might be blind). Thanks for the tip today! I am running out to my Radio Shack (the last one remaining in my area before they go the way of the carrier pidgeon) to pick up a 1/8" jack and do it!

As far as standards, I was repairing my headphones with a 3.5mm connector that had some pre-cut wire on it. (The headphones had a short cable that I didn't want to make any shorter.) The headphones had red, white, and green and the replacement connector had red white and black. I ended up doing some research to see what wires did what depending on the wiring scheme.

Nice work guys - easy to understand, good delivery, wise counsel.

Nice one guys. I love the disclaimers thrown in. Very funny...

Lol, my headphones broke and I cant hear the video.

I gave you a like for teaching me to burn the headphone cable! That's gold!

I tried this and went from sound coming from my left ear to no sound at all. Thanks guys.

Thanks for making this video. I followed it step by step and was able to successfully replace the jack on my headphones. Thanks!

Thank you for the lighter tip! All smooth sailing from there.

Hi im new to this and dont know how to soder , but i have a question .... Instead of fixing the bottom tip of the wires and adding a new jack to it ... How can i add an aux input to the headset?? Instead of having to fix the tips, so whenever my wiring breaks i can just buy a new aux cable like the dre beats headset idk if i explained that correctly . Cause i have a jbl headset that i love but there so hard to find n expensive but the wiring keep breaking n i dont want to throw them away I want to recycle them. N add a aux

For those that have the Steel Series Arctis with their proprietary cable and random disconnects, audio only on one side or phone adapter not working without fiddling with the cable you can take a hammer and tap lightly the tip of the male connector (not the jack, their weird usb like cable) so that when you insert it in the female connector the metal housing pushes the contacts properly. This is how I fixed mine.

i forgot his name but i used to love their computer tv programmes.very educational.i wonder what happend to those shows.

How the fuck am i supposed to hear when my headphones are broken?

My giant over-ear headphones with 50mm drivers had an inline mic, but all the headphone wires went through the mic's circuit board, and the wire for the left channel broke off the circuit board. After a few hours of trying to solder the tiniest wire to a circuit board, I gave up, desoldered all the wires, chucked the circuit board into my parts bin, and just directly soldered all the speaker wires to one another. It works wonderfully now! I did that 2 years ago and it is still holding up to this very day. however, by doing that, they don't have a mic anymore, but the mic was crap anyways so I didn't really care. Sadly, I might have to get new ones as the plastic diaphragm is starting to get crinkly and whenever I put it to max volume, I get terrible distortion as a result (it gets unbearably loud for me, and I always listen on medium volume). On medium volume though, it still works wonderfully. Also, they sound way better than beats and I got them for about 50 bucks 3-4 years ago. (if you are curious, the model # is JVC HA-MR55X). Ah, isn't diy fun?

One time I was fixing my good old Philips she9000 then I finished soldering I realized I didn't put the plug cover on the cable before. ALL OF MY HATE.

How does this repair change if the wire is broken at the mic/control pod hanging on the headphone wire? I never use the mic/control pod, and I'm perfectly OK with just cutting it out.

How else is watching this with one side headphones 😂

It would be helpful if you labeled your video to include the word jack since you actually fix the jack and not the cable. I happened to come across this, thank God, as it was just what I needed. Great instruction, very detailed and easy to follow.

Next vid project... How to REINFORCE your headphones so they withstand this kind of breakage :P

On your 4 pole/TRRS wiring, your cable (and mine on my Klipsch IEMs) has FIVE wires, not four. You mention red, green, ground, and red/green. You have another gold that I assume is ground. Do you just solder the two golds to the same point on the plug?

I can save millions with this

Thank you, that helps. Now to go pick up some solder and give it shot. Is it the same for the 3.5 L shaped plugs? The plastic housing doesn't look like it's threaded. If it is, it's beyond finger tight-I'll have to try the pliers on it. Thumbs up.

FUCKIN HATE ADS

Thanks! I had a cable/soldering lose inside my k701 and didn't know how to take them apart so I could fix them. Thanks to your video I have yet again working headphones.

Right after I threw away my broken headphones, I see this.

If anyone one wants to find this plug just search "DIY 3.5mm (1/8") stereo Headphone Jack". I was researching for a bit and this seems to get the most results for this plug. There are also screw types of this plug where you don't need a soldering iron, you just need a small long screw driver, wire strippers, and a lighter to burn off the enamel. I see all the comments of people complaining about the price and burning their fingers; they should have spent 20 minutes researching or reading comments before hand.

How the fuck am I supposed to do ALL of that myself?!

I'm going to try this on my KOSS PortaPros that I got two christmas' ago and use regularly. That's an interesting soldering method. I remember from soldering projects as a kid that melting solder onto the tip if the iron and then rubbing it onto the connectors would have been bad form. If that because these connections are so small and delicate?

I don't have those tool at all to fix my cheap $5 head phones

In case anyone wondered, the big one is the ground and for the brown cable(there could be 2 brown cables for mic ones), where do i connect the red, blue and green ones?, well there are 3 smaller pins, left one for blue, middle one for green (microphone) and right one for the red cable.

This COULD be a good video but MY HEADPHONES ARE BROKEN SO I CANT HEAR!

I dont know how to THANK u really i needed to know how to uncover that material which coating the 3 wires of the headphone but i connected them with something more easy it was a READY cable a ready plug(a 2 male Plug Cable) i cut one of them and used it with no need the soldering stuff

Excellent!!! I get through so many headphones due to this problem! All you need to do now is pronounce soldering correctly :P

People, after years of experimenting, I have finally found the BEST way to solder these tiny headphone wires 1)Firstly strip the plastic wire housing. 2) Next apply PAINT THINNER on each of the tiny wires. Wait for it to dry(2 mins). 3) Then grab a soldering iron, put some solder on it, and run the tip of the iron through the wire in a DOWNWARDS DIRECTION -the wire should start bubbling - this actually gets rid of the enamel coating as it sticks to the solder. Let this solder drip on the table/remove this solder. (If you use lighter to burn the enamel, you don’t actually remove the enamel - you just melt it, which is why people find it so hard to solder these wires. ) Now, you have actually REMOVED and TINNED the wire (which is impossible if you use fire to melt the enamel) At this stage you just need to connect the tinned wires together and solder.

i cant hear anything IF MY HEADPHONES DOESNT WORK

Thank the heavens I found this! I just got new headphone yesterday, good ones too, and they are already broken. I'm gonna do this soon so I can get back to what I was going to do.

I would prefer watching what they are doing, not who they are

Ok, for people who have headphones with mic usually blue and green wire are + for the 2 headphones and red and gold twisted together is - for the headphones, separate clear red and clear gold are + and - for the mic, I find it easier than soldering to cut off the wire and connect to another wire with good plug.

I inhaled... what now? do I hold it in?... please respond quick :)

Many thanks for this insightful video. You say at around the 4:02 mark the various colors of the wires and where they go, you say the outer pin is red, which outer pin would that be? If I look down on my jack I have two 'outer' pins on the left and the right. Does the red go on my right hand side pin or my left hand side pin? To also be clear, I am using a four-pole TRRS audio/mic jack so I have four colored wires: red, green, blue, and gold. I am assuming the gold goes in the same place as yours, the green at the top as you say in the video and the red and blue? Many thanks in advance for whatever answer is given.

Wtf am I doing here, I'm listening to this with my headphones

This video was the first thing that popped up when I search to figure out why one of my wires looked so weird. Fire solved it, thanks!

Or just buy a new headphones wire.. more expensive to get the equipment in the first place.

What about the blue cable and the two white fabric cables ? I have gold, blue green and red

*GREAT So I can go out today and spend $30 on a pair of good earbuds or I can go spend $15 on a cheap soldering iron $25 on a magnifying micro clamping contraption and $5-7 on pckge of jack input ends and spend an hour + swearing and cursing and burning my fingers😃*.

Man I’ve wiggled mine so much both ends are unwired and tapped up but hopefully this will help. I sooo am afraid 😱 to do the example your showing. I’ve been shocked one to many times. Thanks was helpful still.

Currently as of age 15, I have destroyed and gone through 70 pairs of crappy headphones.

Well done video. Thanks guys. Have you ever replaced the in-ear/bud piece? I need to take the buds from one set and attach them to the cord for another set. I'm assuming this is possible as I believe the internal wiring is all the same.

Nice, you warn us about ventilation and then show us the effects of not having any. Was this a nod to Tim Allen?

Thank you! I just ordered 5 trrs connectors to fix my broken headphoneS! Great channel

Bingo, tried to fix my Sennheisers by just replacing the bad end that plugs into the headphone with another one from a previous cable that also had one go bad. I tried just twisting the bare wires together to see if that would work and was surprised when no sound came out at all. I didn't realize they had a coating on them, just assumed the color was anodized. Now I got it working just like new, thanks for saving me $20.

This little product will make sure your cable doesn't break again: The Cable Saver: www.bubblebeeindustries.com/products/bumblebee-industries-the-cable-saver

DIY Tryin you can actually use the solder and the solder iron to remove the coating. The solder will be hot enough to remove the coating.

hello can you please add on the description the tools you are using to repair , some links on amazon or whatever so we can buy them.thanks

Nice. What did you say about the wiring again. The red into the tall link. Green into the short link. And then. I need to replace a jack for the PS4 headphone

That electronics magnifier with the clips, I just used mine like that yesterday! (was trying to fix a broken iphone 5s, i think its dead Jim, might have fried display because I didnt disconnect battery before working on it)

really helped when I was trying to repair my earphone jack, thumbs up!

The most important task of the whole performance.....building / buying contraption with alligator clip to stabilize space to enable iron, solder and wires to come together if doing this alone without a buddy to help.

Obviously you never heard the original mix of Nowhere man, but Kudos for digging the greatest band of all time!

Hey, I have some apple airpods that I'm going to repair for a friend. He never uses the microphone so I'll just use a TRS plug. Do I need the wires that are Red+Gold, Green+Gold and Red+Green or can I just cut them?

i want to repair my headphone. but, after cutting off the old jack and exposing the wires, i find myself with one uncolored, copper looking wire, and two colored with a green/bluish tint, perfectly identical. should i assume that the copper one is the ground and the other two the channels? or might this be a different thing? i dont want to solder and desolder it like 12 times to trial and error.

Thank you So much... I have a $300.00 Pair of studio head phones I thought I just fried... I'm listening to your video with them now!! I don't ever comment on anything... Ever... Thank you sincerely. !!

I just tried this method out, but my right channel keeps getting scratchy after soldering. I tried messing with the wires and found that when i adjusted the base where the rubber coating is still around the wires, the audio comes in and out. Are there certain wires that shouldnt touch certain parts of the jack? Is the wire inside the rubber bad, and i should trim it back further and start there? Any help would be appreciated!

DIY Tryin, I have a usb headset (Razer Kraken 7.1) that broke when i my leg got caught on the cable while rushing to my father's franatic screams. I came back to find the gold plated usb-piece stayed in the pc but the cable got pulled. there were 4 metal pieces conecting the usb to the rest of the cable. they got cut, 3 at the usb and 1 pulled away with the cable which is bent and has a spike coming out. so essentially ruined, right at the rubber piece covering the usb port. How can i fix this? should if i cut the cable how am i going to put everything back together? Please help! P.S. Razer's customer support has no intention of aiding anyone in anything and their purpose is simply to tell anyone that complains rightfully or not to go screw themselves in a civil manner and show the least interest in helping customers with their products.

Thanks to you, I finally repaired my 1984 Sony MDR-70 headphones ! Works like a charm :-)

I have open mine at the insid, one of the headphone. One of the things inside is broken but there is two ends at the "cover". Which should I put it on?

When your earphones are so fucked up you don't even know what they are saying

I have some 1more triple driver headphones with a gold, green, blue, red and red/gold stripped wires. so five wires total. I believe I have the TRRS connector, but I guess I don't know where to solder the wires and what is what... Help much appreciated!

The chord I"m repairing is a black 3.5mm (1/8" headphone jack size) stereo female to female connector extension cord. This will work on. Mini stereo and/or aux; ear plug, headphone mini-stereo plugs, to include multiple number of devices. (Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, Cellphones, iPod's, and Mp-players, Piano keyboards, Guitar amps and Automotive Stereo aux plugs etc.). The internal wires are color coded: + Red for Positive, - White for Negative Yellow for ground I think!.

What is that thing called that they are using to hold the jack in place? It has two clamps and a magnifyer

Danng so radio shack was still around 9 years ago. I miss it now. What a pain.

Please correct your verbal description to match the illustration shown at 4:00 or annotate the video to indicate to use the illustration and not the audio description in the video. Alternately, you can add a close up photograph of the plug terminals with attachment descriptions. Your verbal description for the wire attachments does not match the illustration at 4:00. At least on my plug, the illustration is correct. However, the terminals for red and green are the same size. The suggested annotated photograph would be added after illustration ends at 4:06 and would show the terminal for the red wire on the right, the terminal for the green wire on the left, and the long terminal for the gold wire in the far back (outboard) between two terminals. Thanks for taking the effort to make this video, though.

Very good and easy. You can take it to the next level with shrink tubes before soldering or moulding into tiny amount of hotglue.

Half of one of the cables of my headphones got separated from where the cable is supposed to be plugged up to. But the first half of the cable is still attached to the earpiece. And, of course, only one part of the headphones works. Will my headphones still be able to get fixed?

What am i doing in this case: i have a green wire, a blue one and two wires which seem to be red(it,s like copper wire and some red wire braided). And i have a jack with 3 inputs. Am i supposed to braid the two red wires and that is the ground ?

Question: If my headphone works on the right channel and doesn't work on the left one (due to the wire of the left channel being damaged because of some rats chewing it.. I should've not left it on the floor) can it still be fixed by soldering?

Watching this on wiggly one sided headphones after I Hulk smashed my Audiotechnicas. Instant sub.

Thanks! I was trying to fix my headphones and removing the wax from the cables was the thing I was missing. This really helped

For anybody installing a 3.5mm male jack for an iambic paddle, the tip is for dit, the second ring is for dah, the base is the ground. I use old phone cord. It's durable and cheap or even free sometimes. The jacks are about $2 ea., Radio Shack or online.Use rosin core solder, of course.

I have a broken headset with two 3.5mm plugs, one for the hesdphones and one for the mic. The plug for the mic is broken. How do I fix it? It has two cables inside: blue and green/gold.