How to repair headphones with broken wires – a DIY guide

ByJared White

We all love our headphones. They’re one essential part of our lives, we literally cannot do without them. And if they malfunction? It will frustrate us for sure. If your music suddenly stops while you’re working out, listening to a jam or when doing all that mixing and mastering, it certainly needs a quick fix. Why don’t you purchase another pair? Honestly, good headphones are expensive and nobody wishes to drain an amazing investment. So practically before you decide to throw them off, try a simple alternative to it – repairing. 

How To Repair Headphones With a Broken Wire?

How To Repair Headphones is a complicated task, but with correct guidance, you can eventually end up repairing your so-called-broken headphones and save yourself from buying a new one. Before you get your hands on required tools, start by diagnosing the problem because there are multiple parts that could malfunction, one of which could be a broken wire. 

Tangling and tossing headphones can easily cause wires to malfunction. To test, if your headphone’s wires are broken, try this: 

  • Check for exposed wires with no rubber coating on them. 
  • Bend the cable back and forth with your device on, once you spot exposed wires.
  • If you hear cracking or changing sound when wire is manipulated, it is certainly a broken wire issue. 

What to do if the wire is broken? 

Here’s how to repair headphones with a broken wire. 

Tools Required

  • A marker
  • Wire Strippers/sharp knife
  • Sharp Scissors
  • Shrink Tube
  • Soldering iron
  • Electrical tape
  • Heat gun

Directions

Step 1

Take time to manipulate the wires to recall how the problem was diagnosed. This is to spot the problem. Using a marker, mark the spot. 

Step 2

Using the wire strippers or a sharp knife, cut the rubber coating from the marked spot. Keep removing until you see the break in the wire. What you’ll see is – one or two signal wires and a ground wire.

Step 3 

With the help of a sharp scissor, cut the damaged part of the inner wires. Ensure that lengths of the wires even so that it doesn’t cause further damages. 

Step 4

Slide the shrink tube onto the cable before you reattach the cables. This tube will replace the removed rubber coating. 

Step 5 

Reconnect the same colored wires. To join them, overlap the two ends of the wire and twist them tightly. 

Step 6

Solder the spots where the wires are reconnected with a soldering iron. Let it sit until it cools down. 

Step 7

Keep the signal wires separate from the ground wire. To do this, put an electrical tape around each of the wire connections. 

Step 8

Lastly, with a heat gun secure the shrink tube to the rest of the headphone cable.

If it fails 

If the DIY method of how to repair headphones with broken wires fails, try all these other methods mentioned in ‘How To Repair Headphones: A DIY Alternative’ on audio Egghead. Yet, if you fail to repair them, try to justify a new headphone purchase with the fact that you tried to repair it. Try finding a new and a better pair of headphones from the nearby store. However, if you wish to search a bit about the latest, high-spec, low-budget headphones, then visit Audio Egghead.

Source URL: https://www.audioegghead.com/how-to-repair-headphones/