Well i am back again, after a long hiatus. So its about time i published something else, right? Today's topic is about my struggle to repair my headphones. For the last two days the bloody thing had gone deaf on me. So i decided to take things into my own hand. Opening up the volume control unit i found that the soldered portions have come off. So i thought, what the hell? All i have to do is solder them back to the circuit board. So i cut off the old wires and cleaned the board with flux.then i removed the insulation exposing new wires. And boy oh boy wasn't i surprised! Each insulated covering has two wires within them.
Ok now this us new to me. So being the noob that i am, i simply soldered the wires as in the previous arrangement. Then the i connected the audio jack to my PC to check and surely there was no sound. So now what? After a moment of deep thought and contemplation i said to myself "blame it on the soldering". There rip it all apart and do a fresh soldering. Give plenty of contact and solder. Believe me when i say that soldering these audio wires is a real pain in the ass. They are almost as thin as a hair and awfully hard to handle Same procedure,same connections still no 'sounds of life'. At this point i was getting all mad at myself and it was Just like the lab exams, all connections are correct yet no output.
I was getting desperate and i made a decision. And so to make things easier for me i ripped apart the connections for a third time. And threw away the volume adjuster. Then i removed the insulation and got ready to wire them up directly. I did just that. Again disappointment. Finally i got onto the Internet, which i should have done at the very start of this mess. As always the Internet saves the day. The reason i haven't been getting the connections right is simply because i hadn't removed the second layer of insulation. Yup you heard me! There is a second layer of insulation on the wires. So far i had only removed the outer plastic
insulation. But the wires are coated with a special paint which insulates them from one another and so a single core can carry two wires namely the live one(which carries the audio signals) and the ground. So in order to remove the paint which insulates the wires you have to use a sandpaper and scrub it off. But the easy way is to burn them. Just expose the wire to an open flame and it just burns away the paint.
There you have it! Thus remove the paint and then solder together the exposed parts...
I cant believe i wasted almost 2 hours on such a trivial thing..
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| Each insulated part encloses two small wires |
Ok now this us new to me. So being the noob that i am, i simply soldered the wires as in the previous arrangement. Then the i connected the audio jack to my PC to check and surely there was no sound. So now what? After a moment of deep thought and contemplation i said to myself "blame it on the soldering". There rip it all apart and do a fresh soldering. Give plenty of contact and solder. Believe me when i say that soldering these audio wires is a real pain in the ass. They are almost as thin as a hair and awfully hard to handle Same procedure,same connections still no 'sounds of life'. At this point i was getting all mad at myself and it was Just like the lab exams, all connections are correct yet no output.
 |
| A picture showing the paint burning off; courtesy of alexwhittemore.com |
I was getting desperate and i made a decision. And so to make things easier for me i ripped apart the connections for a third time. And threw away the volume adjuster. Then i removed the insulation and got ready to wire them up directly. I did just that. Again disappointment. Finally i got onto the Internet, which i should have done at the very start of this mess. As always the Internet saves the day. The reason i haven't been getting the connections right is simply because i hadn't removed the second layer of insulation. Yup you heard me! There is a second layer of insulation on the wires. So far i had only removed the outer plastic
insulation. But the wires are coated with a special paint which insulates them from one another and so a single core can carry two wires namely the live one(which carries the audio signals) and the ground. So in order to remove the paint which insulates the wires you have to use a sandpaper and scrub it off. But the easy way is to burn them. Just expose the wire to an open flame and it just burns away the paint.
There you have it! Thus remove the paint and then solder together the exposed parts...
I cant believe i wasted almost 2 hours on such a trivial thing..
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