Headphones knackered ?

[daz]

I bought a pair of half decent Sony headphones a few month back. They're ok but nothing special.

Still, 40 quid is 40 quid, so I was not best pleased when I decapitated them by rolling the bloody Dyson over the cable, not to mention puzzled. How can a bloody vacuum cleaner cut right through a headphone cable ?

I'll tell you how. The bloody cable has three wires no thicker than a hair, inside a contraceptive thin rubber outer case. The three 'wires' are colored red, green and bare copper. At least I think the green one is a wire its literally to thin to see ?!

Is there any chance of someone who has no access to an electron microscope and Nano medical equipment being able to repair this ? I mean if I just tie the colored 'wires' together, then wind some tape around them, like we did back in the stone age (ie: the 1990's) that wont work will it ?


(whisper)
[i][size=3]I am sick to death of buying bloody tiny earphones and snapping them though, by catching a finger in a loop or zipping up a jacket or something similar. So I thought I'd buy a decent sized pair and they'd last. Ha! [/size][/i]

[i][size=3]When I was a lad we had real headphone cables thicker than your finger, mutter mumble, bring back national service, etc etc[/size][/i]

Edited March 30, 2012 by daz

[simwells]

I'd recable them entirely myself then you can put on a cable as thick as you like!

[Looper]

If you get a good join and insulate them from each other it should work fine.

[daz]

[quote name='simwells' timestamp='1333126689' post='1597891']
I'd recable them entirely myself then you can put on a cable as thick as you like!
[/quote]

Damn I threw out an old pair of curly cable type headphones a few month back. I could have used the cable off them.

I[i] told them [/i]that throwing stuff out always comes back to haunt you!

[quote name='Looper' timestamp='1333129367' post='1597920']
If you get a good join and insulate them from each other it should work fine.
[/quote]

That's the wired thing I don't think they are insulated from each other inside this gossamer rubber outer. Or they might be, actually I cant actually see that small ?

Jeesh I know copper is expensive these days, but making it out of copper vapour is ridiculous

Edited March 30, 2012 by daz

[icastle]

That thin cable is a pain to fix, but it is doable if you're careful.

Slide a piece of heatshrink tubing over the cable and shove it out the way - you'll need that later.
On the insulated wires you need to strip back about 1mm of the insulation and tin the wire - the heat will make the insulation shrink back, so you don't want to expose more than 1mm.
Something that I discovered a couple of weeks ago is that if you lay your soldering iron on the table and create a pool of fresh solder on the tip, feeding the micro wires into the pool to tin them is far easier.

Join the first wires together and use a tiny piece of insulating tape to insulate them.
Join the next pair of wires together and stick those to the first pair with another sliver of tape.
Join the sleeving pair together - don't bother insulating those.

Check your headphones to make sure all is correct and working.

Slide the heatshrink tubing over the join and briefly heat it with a lighter to make it shrink tight against the repair area - ideally, you want to cover about 1/2" of the cable either side of the joint area (thus removing any direct stress against the join.