Dammit, my fave Sennheisers are toast!

[smason]

Plugged my fave Sennheiser headphones into my notebook last night to listen to something, and they were dead. Both sides.
Looking at the plug, I suspected someone tripped over them and broke the wire. I measured the plug, no reading on either channel.
No sweat, I'll chop the plug off and put a new one on.

Ugh. Miserable wire, fine stranded and looks like each individual strand is enameled.

I scraped off some enamel and measured with an ohmmeter with the headphones on. Left side gets a reading, and I can hear when the ohmmeter passes current through. Right side, dead.
Maybe a break further up. I chop a couple feet off (the cable always was way too long..) still dead. Lovely.
My good network cable tester failed earlier this week (a topic for another forum) wonder what's next....

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Dammit, my fave Sennheisers are toast!

Ohh man, I know what it is to lose a good pair of headphones. I've been through dozens of pairs of headphones in my (short) lifespan and it's a pain finding a good pair

[kaboom]

Re: Dammit, my fave Sennheisers are toast!

I know exactly what kind of wire you're talking about. It is possible to re-terminate it.

First, split the 'mini zipcord' into both cables for L & R. Strip the outer jacket on each. As you've found, there are lots of small enameled wires. Each side should be 'roped' into two 'bundles' fairly easily.

For the left side, you should have clear and either black or blue bundles.
Right should be clear and red.

Take each 'wire' and tin it the same way as you would magnet wire- lots of flux and 'wash' the wire with a large solder ball on the end of the tip. They'll tin up...

The two clear varnished leads are the common (sleeve), red-right (ring), blue or black is the left (tip).

I've done this twice to a pair of Panasonics that get constant use. I'll eventually have to replace the cord because the wires finally broke at the driver housings. They still work, though!

-Paul

[999999999]

Re: Dammit, my fave Sennheisers are toast!

After the cable has flexed or been stressed enough to have breaks, I like to just replace the whole thing. That way you can use stronger cabling, a nice plug, in exactly the length you want. Adding strain relief at the plug and cans will prolong life too, is usually where it flexes the most unless you bend it a lot for storage or transportation. As for what cable to use, that's a big can of worms covered in snake oil and unicorns. Use wire that's fine multistrand for flexibility... or don't, some people even use plain old solid core CAT5 network cable twisted pairs.

[ratdude747]

Re: Dammit, my fave Sennheisers are toast!

Ohh man, I know what it is to lose a good pair of headphones. I've been through dozens of pairs of headphones in my (short) lifespan and it's a pain finding a good pair

agreed 100%. I finally found a nice set for $10 at a discount store... i got really lucky!

[mariushm]

Re: Dammit, my fave Sennheisers are toast!

If the cable is removable, you can request the cable from a local distributor...

I have Sennheiser HD 212 Pro (about 80$ when I bought them) and replaced the cable 2 times already and it only cost me about 3$ each time to have it shipped to me.

Otherwise, don't bother... get an extension cable and solder the ends inside each speaker in the headphones.

If they're for home, here's two suggestions:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...t=1#largeimage

Chop the RCA jacks at the end and solder those inside the headphones. I say for home becuase it's thick cable.

For portable phones, you can get thinner cable but you have to search a lot to get a cable that has the channels separate, lots of thin cables have only 3 wires inside the cable.

Something like this would work:

http://www.amazon.com/RiteAV-3-5mm-S...5426272&sr=8-6