Help-Repairing Audio Cable

Hey guys,

Let's start off, I was having a bit of a nurd-rage and I completely tore apart my headphone wires :/

Im just kidding, they got caught on my desk. I went to stand up after playing some competitive CoD and they got caught under my desk (long cable) and the actual wire ripped apart. Not the solder joint, but the wire.

So, I'm wondering if theres anything I should consider when soldering audio cables coming out of a standard 3.5mm jack. There is just one specific thing thats bugging me. There seems to be some type of cotton-ish material inbetween each strand of wire that burns up on contact with my soldering iron :thinking: I'm not sure if it's got to do with the sound quality and what-not but I really have to remove it if I want to obtain a proper solder connection.

1 Last question...

There are green/red and gold coloured cables coming off the 3.5mm jack and the headphone.

I'm guessing the red and green wires are for audio channels (L and R) and also quite sure that the gold-ish wires are for low sounds (bass) But, each of the 2 strands of wire (1 wire coming off each headphone cup) have a gold cable along with their audio channel cable. So, im not sure if there are is actually sound direction on the bass but I thought I'd ask the more experienced

If you've read this far, :gj:

Here are some pics:

Just connect the cables back to their matching colours, and you should be good to go. Highly unlikely there is a conductor just for bass. Red and green would be your left and right, and the gold a ground.

Aha, thanks Things!

Now, to warm up the weller that I randomly found lying in a drawer. Lol, I guess good things come out of searching your house.

I would just burn off the fiber strands at the tips of the wires with a lighter before soldering.

Hey, good to see you back on the forum Lotus

I was going to just cut them off but if it proves hard to seperate it from the conductors there's nothing else to do but go pyro on it

So, the fibre strands have no use? I wonder why they're there in the first place.

They're there to strengthen the wire from exactly what you just did to break them

LOL! I guess it didn't quite do the job

burning also removes the layer of insulator off the wire. cant solder with it there!

I use selectable wire insulation cutters

sorry I worded it wrong. I meant the green and red wires, they have insulation around them. They are 'magnet wire' that's why they can be touching and still have left and right audio.

Hmm, thats quite interesting!

So, I have to burn off the wires insulation to solder properly and get it to connect/conduct properly, right?

yeah. burn it then scrape it off. don't forget to heatshrink!

Heat shrink is an absolute must in situations like these

LaZeRz said:

LOL! I guess it didn't quite do the job

Click to expand...

They weren't really designed to be able to lift a desk...:crackup:
As was stated above just connect like wires together.
Don't for get to insulate the connection from each other.

You'll need to find some way to mechanically tie the
outer jacket of the cables together or the next time
you pull on the cables they will break in the same spot
with even less tension.


Jerry

Good luck !

Jim

You probability have fixed it by now but if not try strong flux to clean the residue from burning the green & red enamel off.