repairing haadset cable

[Chris French]

My daughter has a computer headset that she uses for gaming etc. the cable is damaged and it doesn't work properly anymore.

Inside the outer insulation the different conductors are each formed from fine wires - different colours, presumably a coloured lacquer to insulate them. Each twisted around some sort of white fibre. At least one of these has broken.

It looks very fiddly to try and repair. Any suggestions to how to approach it? Can't see how I can clan up the wires and try to solder them without just messing them up and breaking them anyway.

[meow2222]

tinsel wire is the search term

NT

[newshound]

And fiddly doesn't even begin to describe the difficulty of repairing it.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Normal way would be to crimp terminals to it. Which you could then solder to, etc.

[DerbyBorn]

She will really want a new headset!

[Brian Gaff]

Normally a new cable is the only way. If its near one end you might be able to shorten it a bit but you are right, they are very fragile and will just die at the next stress point in a few weeks. Been there. New headset perhaps, though it does gall me that when this happens one can never find a mor robust cable of the same number of connectors to use. Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Half decent headsets would have an easy way of replacing the cable only. But that would cost more to make. You pays your money...

[The Natural Philosopher]

And having attempted repairs many times on this s**te, dont bother. Buy a new set

[dave]

It's called Litz wire and it is repairable - but you have to 1) have enough length available 2) take a bit of care.

Each strand is insulated (for skin effect reasons). So there are two ways I found that can be used to clean the varnish off each strand before soldering. Hold the copper ends in a small flame for about a second. It will probably catch fire as the varnish burns - blow it out quicky. Clean/wipe the soot off to expose the bare copper. Second way - drag the wire gentle across some emery paper to sand the vanish off. It won't all come off but just do enough to see the bare copper. You can then solder it.

[ChrisK]

IME you can just tin it with a hot iron (eg suitable for unleaded solder), the laquer melts when hot enough & seems to act as a flux.

Almost certainly not worth the bother though. It will probably break elsewhere.

ChrisK

[newshound]

Not sure about that. Litz wire was familiar to radio hams and the like in the good old days, you could also burn the lacquer off by dipping it in meths and lighting it. But it's only relevant for RF, not for audio use. Tinsel wire OTOH has a fibre core (as described by OP) to give it strength and flexibility. Normally terminated by crimping, using *tiny* crimps. The soldering must be automated, it has to be very fast to avoid melting the fibre.

[Dave W]

Time for a trip to the pound shop.

[Dave Liquorice]

Cut out the damaged section, expose a suitable length of the wires. You may find that the coloured lacquer will burn off under the influence of a hot iron pre-loaded with solder/flux and the fibre will melt back and char and the bulk picked off. If so you can just solder the now tinned ends and heatshrink for support. Join each wire but stagger the joints to reduce bulk.

If the lacquer resists the hot iron you can try physical abrasion but it's very easy to break the wires.

[Andrew Gabriel]

They're not too difficult. You have to get the white fibre out of the way because it stops solder working - I untwist the wire from an inch or so of the fibre and cut the fibre off. Then you need a hot soldering iron, and you hold it on the conductors until the conductors tin, which will happen as soon as the enamel coating has burned off.

I have done quite a few at repair events - the conductors break inside the cable sheath when the wearer snags the cable on something as they walk past. Also, unplugging by pulling on the cable eventually does it.

[Chris French]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

Well thanks everyone, I may as well give it a go, not convinced it'll work though :-)

[Bob Eager]

I usually end up dismantling at the other end and putting a new cable in. Usually they're not tinsel ones, so not quite as flexible, but better than a new set of phones.

(I was given a nice pair of 'brand new' Sennheisers that had been broken cable-wise by a PC World employee before sale, and skipped; one of my students rescued them for me as he thought I might like them. They're fine now.)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Better quality Sennheisers have plug in cables. One reason they were popular for pro use.

[Chris French]

In message , Chris French writes

Weel, now have a working headset :-) My to my daughters surprise I think. Thanks Andrew that worked a treat.

Not as difficult as I expected, and maybe not the neatest best repair, but serviceable. Hopefully it will last for a bit.

[The Other Mike]

And really nice connectors too, got some HD414's and HD424's still going strong at around 40 years old.

You can still get the cables and ear pads from Sennheiser

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Other thing is if the cable gets pulled - like say jammed and you stand up while wearing them, it just unplugs. Rather than breaking.