Do-it-yourself computer headset (headphone) repair. How to solder a plug to all types of headphones How to solder a headphone plug

Very often, the wire breaks off near the plug on the headphones.

Let's try to fix this problem on our own. To do this, we need glue, a regular spool of thread, a piece of heat shrink tubing and electrical tape.

Glue is desirable to use, which is designed for gluing fabric. But I only had "Monolith" available. Under no circumstances should electrically conductive adhesive be used. From the tools you will need a soldering iron with a thin sting, flux, solder, wire cutters, a sharp knife, a lighter and a tester.
First, cut off the wire from the plug and remove the protective cover from it with wire cutters.

With a soldering iron, carefully remove the remnants of solder and check the plug for a short circuit. Our plug has three pins. It's common, left and right
channel.

The tester, when ringing these contacts together, should show infinite resistance. If this is not the case, then either the snot is hanging from tin or the insulator is melted. You can try to remove the "snot" with a soldering iron or a needle file. In the second case, the plug is most likely beyond repair. Will have to look for another. But in our case, everything is fine and we continue to work.
Carefully remove the insulation from the wire.

From it to the plug there are three multi-colored wires. Blue, green and gold (braid). Gold is the common wire. The other two are the left and right headphone channels.

You have to work carefully. Each strand of wire is very thin and fragile. Also, the wires are in silk insulation. The ends of the wires must be tinned (tinned). To do this, we clean the wires with a sharp knife from silk insulation and twist them together. You can try to burn the insulation a little with a lighter flame and clean it to a shine.

After tinning, we measure the resistance of the left and right channels relative to the common wire. In our case, it was about 50 ohms.

Now comes the most laborious process. This is soldering wires to the plug.
Before soldering, do not forget to put a heat shrink tube on the wire.
It is desirable to fix the plug somehow. For example, in a vice or with any other clamp. As a solder, I used POS-61, and as a flux, an alcohol solution of rosin. On the wires before soldering, you need to put on small cambric, made from the insulation of any thin wire.

We solder quickly and carefully so as not to burn the wire and melt the insulators. If a drop of solder does not lie neatly, it can be corrected with a needle file. After soldering, we make a control measurement of the resistance. If it matches what happened before, then the work has been done successfully. Otherwise, you will have to do the work again. Next, we drip a little glue onto the soldering point, preventing it from getting on the plug contacts and let it dry.

After that, we wrap the soldering place with a little effort with a thread and tie it into a knot. We make a control measurement of resistance. Then we impregnate the wrapped thread with glue and let it dry well.

Once again, the control measurement of resistance.
And the final touch is the installation of heat shrink tubing in place. It is advisable to heat the tube with a blow dryer. If not, you can try the flame of a lighter.

We do this quickly so as not to damage the wire and soldering. In the absence of heat shrink tubing, you can use electrical tape or tape.
After all these cunning manipulations, we make the last control measurement of resistance and rejoice (or grieve) at the result.

I want to note that the work is very painstaking. A minimum skill of working with a soldering iron is required and the first time it may not work.
In this way, the performance of many headphones was restored. You can also restore the cords of power supplies and chargers of various gadgets. In the latter case, you need to correctly unsolder the "+" and "-".

Quite often it happens in the life of music lovers such a situation that your favorite headphones stop working. The most common problem is mechanical damage to the cable near the plug. This happens for various reasons: the connector was abruptly pulled out of the socket, caught on something, or clamped with lightning. Yes, and just from time to time. How to fix the situation and bring the headphones back to life? Let's figure out how to solder the plug to the headphones.

What to do first

Before proceeding with self-repair, it is necessary to determine the nature of the damage received and the possibility of replacing only one connector. It happens that, in addition to this, a cable replacement is also required.

It is also worth evaluating the financial side of the issue: the purchase of the necessary tool can result in the cost of working in the workshop, or even replacing the headphones with similar new ones. The answers to these questions will tell you where to start, how to solder the 3.5 plug to the headphones and whether this is necessary.

Required Tools

In stores, for the most part, collapsible plugs are sold, which consist of two parts: the connector itself and the housing into which the first one is screwed. They also differ in their quality and material of manufacture. Undoubtedly, for better headphones, you need to choose a more expensive connector so that interference from a cheap “jack” does not spoil the joy of owning good headphones.

For this operation we need:

The headphones themselves or a headset with a faulty or torn connector.
The new connector you will be installing.
Low power soldering iron with a thin tip.
Solder, rosin and flux.
Sharp knife or pliers.

This is the minimum set of tools with which you can get started. A good tool is the key to success, as it will be easier to solder the plug to the headphones with it.

How to replace the headphone plug

To correctly perform the operation to restore the performance of the headphones, you need to know how to solder the headphone wires to the plug, which ones go where, and follow the instructions. This is done in a few simple steps.

The first step is preparing the wires for subsequent soldering. Before starting work, everything must be prepared by removing the insulation from the wires. This will make future work easier. This can be done with a sharp knife or pliers.

You should get three wires: red, black (possibly white, blue or green) and a shielding braid (it can also have insulation, often transparent). From the red and black wires, the insulation should not be completely removed, leaving 2-3 mm each so that later there is no contact between them.

Step two - preparing the connector for subsequent soldering. The spare part purchased in the store should be disassembled into its constituent elements. You should scratch the places of future soldering a little, as this will allow you to better solder the plug to the headphones.

After this, the wires must be irradiated with solder, trying not to touch the points to which you will not solder. There is so little space in the connector, and extra "snot" of solder will only complicate further soldering.

The third step is the soldering itself. The first thing to do is thread the wire into the connector housing. You won't be able to do it after that, you'll have to redo it. Before soldering, you should pay attention to which wire went to the tip. This should be the left channel, that is, the black wire. First of all, the "ground" is soldered, and then the channels - left and right.

Step four - insulating and assembling the connector. In order to prevent the contacts from shorting and damaging the headphones, it is worth insulating the connector. The easiest way to do this is with electrical tape. To do this, it is worth carefully, in a thin layer, wrapping the plug, checking whether the case sits in place. If everything is done correctly, the connector will assemble and the headphones will work.

How to replace the headset plug

Headphones with a microphone - a headset - have a slightly different design than simple headphones, but not so different as to not cope with it. So how to solder the plug to the headphones with a microphone?

The headset has only one wire more than regular headphones. This wire goes to the microphone. The pinout of the connector can vary greatly depending on the headset manufacturer, but there are two main ones:

CTIA, where the pinout from the tip looks like a left-right-common-microphone.
OMTP, where things are a little different - left-right-microphone-common.

When soldering, if there is such a need, you can convert from one standard to another by rearranging the two extreme wires.

What not to do

The biggest mistake everyone makes is being too hasty, as it's not easy to solder the plug to the headphones correctly. Working with soldering is quite painstaking and accurate, the speed will lead to errors that can seriously affect performance, or even completely ruin the gadget. The main errors of self-repair are as follows:

Poor soldering, which is why after some time the headphones or headset stop working.
Poor isolation of contacts, due to which the headphones also do not work.
Buying a low-quality connector, which is why it is not possible to do well.
Do not use a short circuit plug. He can kill the speakers, which will only lead to a replacement.
Incorrect marking of the length of the wires will not allow you to assemble the connector.

The tester in ohmmeter mode will tell you how to solder the plug to the headphones if the colors are very different from the usual ones, and you forgot which channel was where.
The left channel of any headphones is the very end of the plug. The second one behind him is always right.
If it is not possible to buy a connector, you can keep the previous one, and make the case from a pen cap or epoxy resin.
When soldering a cheap plug, insert a spring from the same fountain pen into it. Speaking beyond the end of the connector, it will save the wire from kinks.
For more convenient work with the connector, you can make a simple holder. To do this, drill a hole in the tree and insert a plug into it.

As you can see, if you follow simple rules and follow the instructions, the work of replacing the headphone jack is not so difficult. With the right tools and the right skill, this can be done in half an hour. But then the joy of having repaired your favorite headphones yourself cannot be compared with anything.

Hi all! Probably, everyone faced such a problem: you bought yourself headphones ... You rejoiced while listening to your favorite music through them. And then bam! And one channel of the headphone stopped working. It's a shame. But let's not snot and run to the store for others. After all, we are radio amateurs (yes, yes, with a capital letter), proud people, and we cannot afford this. So let's get started. On sale now there are such collapsible plugs 3.5 mm "mini jack". Of course, their quality lately leaves much to be desired. And now, recently, a friend of mine gave me to fix the headphones (cheap, Chinese). I didn’t have to see the plug, so I’ll have to take the collapsible one mentioned above.

First, cut / bite off a little wire:

After we remove a little insulation so that the wires can be seen:

Gently burn the varnish insulation of all 3 wires (about half).

Then we clean it with a knife or scissors. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to shoot it, but the essence is simple and clear - we apply wires to the finger and, with gentle movements, we clean the wires from burnt varnish.

Now we dip the stripped wire into the flux (if any), you can do without it, the wires are tinned faster with it (it takes longer with rosin).

We make it so that a drop of solder hangs on the soldering iron, and in it, so to speak, we heat the wire until it is tinned. Here are the wires already tinned:

Now, you need to pass the wire through the plug housing. As it often happens, I soldered everything, but forgot the case - and I have to unsolder everything back ( yes, it happened 10 times - approx. editions). Now we solder: a wire without color (transparent) insulation (varnish), i.e. minus (common), solder in the middle:

After, we solder the other two wires - two pluses, blue or red, or red and green, to the side contacts:

Now we crimp the wire with two petals:

We screw the plug body into place, and you're done - we repaired the headphones ourselves!

P.S. . A little life hack: if you want the spring not to climb inside the case, with a little effort, pull it out slightly and turn it counterclockwise a little, since it goes further in breadth, it will get stuck there. And now the spring does not run back and forth.

In this way, almost any plug is repaired - microphone, from a headset, other audio equipment, and so on. Thank you for your attention! Author - Admin4638.

Additions to the article:

If possible, it is better to use the existing connector if it has survived or a similar one from more or less expensive (but already dead, otherwise why is everything started?) headphones. Because from experience, new connectors come across extremely poor quality. The contacts there are crimped and very weak.
Since the old connector is used, it must be cleaned of insulation (I cut with a clerical knife along the seam formed by the mold), soldered to the soldering points (usually everything is there except for the mass; the mass will have to be slightly cleaned and irradiated). while not forgetting about the heat shrinkage on the center (L) and middle (P).
By the way, if there are veins in a non-combustible polymer, as in the example, then when stripping with a knife, the veins are damaged, and if it is also oxygen-free copper, then they break at once, so you just need to solder by irradiating such an end without stripping in a drop of tin. The polymer from heating will partially expose the cable to a length sufficient for soldering (approximately 2 mm).
For beauty, uniformity and waterproofing, before shrinking the top layer of heat shrink, pour hot glue under it, when shrinking, excess glue will come out - you can either immediately remove it with toilet paper (a universal cleaner for any surface from almost any contamination) or cut it off after hardening. From the second or third time you will get just masterpieces :)

P.S. At one time, KOSS inserts with a gold-plated jack served as connector donors - it is compact, beautiful and of high quality. And for these braids, from listening at the maximum, the speakers simply failed, by the way, a valuable source of neodymium magnets - pucks. Thank you for your attention. Ringo aka Pavel K.

Quite often happens on the headset wire break suitable for the plug - according to experts, this is the most common defect that occurs due to frequent kinks and various mechanical damage.

Inside the cable are several very thin and delicate wires that can easily be torn from a strong pull or tug. Is it possible to repair the headphone plug on my own, and what is needed for this?

To repair headphones with your own hands, we need:

non-conductive adhesive or epoxy resin;
a special heat-shrinkable type tube is an alternative to electrical tape;
old fountain pen;
tester (multimeter);
a soldering iron with a thin tip and all related components (tin, rosin);
side cutters;
mounting knife;
lighter.

It's better to use fabric glue if you don't find epoxy that only needs a few drops.

Repair algorithm

You can repair a lot on your own - the main thing here is the desire and ability to work with various tools. Consider the whole process in stages.

We bite off the plug with side cutters, departing from it by 2-3 cm.
We take out the headphone plug and a piece of the old wire from the soldered connector - to do this, simply cut the shell along the seam with a sharp mounting knife.

Now we can see where the wires are soldered to the plug - we take a photo for memory, so as not to confuse anything later. However, there is standard wiring coming from the headphones: copper (yellow) color - common, green - left earphone, red - right.
We free the cut wire leading to the headphones from the varnish coating, clean and tin the ends of the wire, connect the ground of each channel together.

We check the plug for the absence of a short circuit, after removing the remnants of tin. The layout of the channels is shown in the photo:
We take the old pen, disassemble it and use only the tip - we will make a new case from it for the plug we disassembled.
We bite off with side cutters of the desired length heat shrink tube, which, instead of electrical tape, will protect the wires from a sharp bend at the very exit from the new plug.
We put the future case on the wire, then the tube, proceed to the final installation. How to solder the wires so as not to confuse anything? For this, there is a photograph taken earlier.
Before packing everything into a tube with heat shrink, we do a check - we put on headphones, with the probes of the multimeter we alternately touch the contacts of different channels, and rustles or clicks should be heard. You can try sticking an unfinished design into phone connector and turn on the radio. If you connect to an MP3 player to listen to music, you can check using the balance how each channel works.
If the test result is positive, we put a tube on the place of soldering and, using an open flame of a lighter, “compress” it so that it firmly covers the open part of the plug, as shown in the photo.
We dilute a few drops of epoxy, apply it to the tube, put on the case, and set everything aside for several hours for the complete polymerization of the components.

That's the whole process, how to fix headphones from a mobile phone or laptop headset.

Wiring diagrams with more than two wire cores

Users are often interested in whether it is possible to repair headphones of a more complex design when there are more wires inside? A different number of wires can fit one plug - it depends on headphone class:

mono - 2 wires, it's hard to confuse something here;
stereo and mono - three wiring and different connection schemes;
stereo headsets - 4 pcs.;
headsets or headphones with a microphone - 5-6 pcs.

Now about each class, except for the first, we will tell in more detail.

Three strands

From each earpiece, there must be two cores in the same braid or in different ones - this is a plus and a minus. Sometimes at the end, when connected to the plug, the designers combine the negative ones into one bundle and 3 pieces are obtained at the output. To make it clear to all users, we provide a detailed wiring diagram for the plug, where you can see exactly where to solder the wires according to their color scheme.

There is no strict standard for coating with colored varnish. For example, the left channel wires can be blue, white, or green.

Four strands

There are two different options here.

Important! The microphone wire at first glance looks like one strand, but in fact there are two of them: a very thin strand in a PVC sheath is wrapped on top with a copper wire with colorless enamel for protection.

5 cores or more

Different types of headsets of the last class can have from 5 to 10 separate veins, so it will be much more difficult to navigate. The signal vein from the microphone is always braided in one color, and the rest come in all sorts of shades. No specialist will tell you exactly which wire to solder where. How to replace the wire from the plug on the headphones in this case? Only this technique works here: we check each vein with a multimeter to determine whether it goes to the left or right speaker, then we find the common ones, combine them into one flagellum.

You need to solder to the plug according to the diagrams that we showed, or find a separate diagram on the Internet that suits your case.

Repair your headset or headphones to your mobile phone in this way and save money from your home budget.

Everyone who uses headphones, sooner or later faced with the fact that they fail. As a rule, this manifests itself in the form of one non-working speaker. Such a breakdown is typical for headphones, and it is due to the fact that their wires are constantly bent. Below in the photo in red circles shows the zones most at risk of a cliff.

As practice shows, if such a breakdown occurs, in most cases, performance can be restored. We will tell you in detail how to solder the headphones so that they continue to delight you with clear sound.

Problem Definition

A break can occur in the plug, at the speaker, or somewhere in the cable. The latter case is extremely rare and, as a rule, is caused by mechanical impact on the wire during careless handling. In such a situation, it is recommended to completely change it, since adhesions will create a problem area.

Most often, the problem lies in the plug itself, since this is the most critical place. In most cases, by pressing on the base of the connector, or bending the cable near it, you can catch the position in which both headphones start working. As a result of this, we can state that the problem lies precisely in the plug.

Standard plugs

Before proceeding with the repair, consider the most common types of headphone jacks, as well as their connection diagram. This will help us decide how to solder the headphone wires if the cable has 4 wires (headset with microphone) or 3 wires.

Below is a classic connection diagram for headphones connected by a common mass. In quality devices such as Koss Porta Pro, Philips, Sony, Sennheiser, etc. a separate shielded wire is used for each channel; in more budget implementations, there may be a common shield for two channels.

For headphones with a microphone, the plug has an additional contact pad, the connection diagram is shown below.

Note that many manufacturers of mobile devices can use non-standard connectors, we will consider this topic at the end of the article.

List of necessary equipment for repair

For work we need:

not a very powerful soldering iron, 25 watts is enough. On the Internet, of course, you can find a technique for how to connect the wires in headphones without a soldering iron, but this cannot be compared with the reliability of soldering. Therefore, if you do not have it, buy it (price from $3), it will always come in handy in everyday life;
rosin and solder;
a new connector (check that it is the same type as the one you are replacing).

Algorithm of actions during repair

Now that we have everything ready, let's start restoring the headphones:

cut off the old connector, approximately at a distance of 0.5-1 cm from its base, so we get rid of the problematic part of the wire;
remove the insulation so as not to damage the wires. As a result, we will see four wires, two of which will be covered with insulating colored varnish, and two without insulation (an example is shown in the photo);

in order to tin the wires, it will be necessary to remove the insulating varnish from them, this is done with a clerical knife or fine-grained sandpaper. The screen of the right and left channels is twisted together;
as mentioned above, it can be three wires, two of which are channels, and one is a common screen, in this case we simply remove the insulating varnish from them;
we disassemble the new connector, do not forget to thread the stereo headphone wires through its base, as shown in the photo (otherwise you will have to redo everything);

Let's start soldering the wires to the connector. It is recommended to start with a common one, after which we already solder the left and right channels. The result is shown in the photo;

Letting the wires and connector cool down for a few minutes can test the result. To do this, connect the plug to the audio output jack and check the operation of the headphones. If everything is fine, proceed to the assembly of the connector. What to do if one earbud still does not work will be discussed separately;
we fix the wire, for this a clamp is provided on the connector (on the contact where the common wire is soldered), an insulated cable is inserted into it and crimped with pliers. In the photo below, the clip is marked with a red circle on the unsoldered connector;

for greater reliability, we isolate the contacts with electrical tape, and at the maximum proximity to them, we recommend tying a knot on the cable. This will significantly reduce the risk that soldering will be broken during an accidental jerk.

assemble the connector and use the headphones for your pleasure. If you want to solder the plug to the headphones 4 wires (that is, with a microphone), the principle of operation is almost the same.

Now consider the option that one of the speakers after replacing the plug continues to be inoperative, there are several reasons for this:

poor-quality soldering, you need to carefully check it;
a problem with the earpiece speaker, a very high probability that the wire broke near it;
problems with the cable itself, as already mentioned above, it is not recommended to build up the cable or connect it at break points.

As you can see, in two cases out of three the problem is solved. If the reason is poor-quality soldering, you should re-solder the connector more carefully; in case of a break near the speaker, proceed according to the following algorithm:

cut the wire near the base of the earpiece;
we disassemble the earpiece, as a rule, they are made self-latching, so there will be no problems with this;
we remove the insulation from the wire and perform its stripping and tinning;
if there is a multimeter, then at this stage you can ring the headphone lead to make sure it is intact;
solder the wires, test the headphones, assemble them.

Video: How to solder headphone wires

Non-standard connectors

We have already mentioned that many manufacturers produce devices where the input on the headset differs from the standard one. For example, some models of Nokia (Nokia), Samsung (Samsung), Ericsson (Ericsson), etc. Headsets are also often found, where instead of a standard plug, for example, WH-205, a USB connector is used.

As for the technology of repairing such headphones, it practically does not differ from the usual one. The only exception may be the search for the original plug for a particular phone model. But, given the increased number of "left" manufacturers of original spare parts, it is not difficult to buy such a connector.

In addition, do not forget that to connect a standard headset to a non-standard connector, you can use the appropriate adapter, for example, the one shown in the photo.

If desired, such an adapter can be soldered independently, but given the low cost of Chinese products, this is not particularly necessary.

As you can see, it is not difficult to solder the headphones correctly, all that is needed for this is accuracy and skills in working with a soldering iron. Even if you didn’t manage to make repairs the first time, don’t be discouraged, check everything again.