Lost in Translation

I learned this today and it’s come in handy twice: Broken or severed headphone cables can be repaired with a utility knife, some electrical tape, and a lighter or matchbook.

1. If the cord isn’t completely severed, use the knife to cut it at the break; then cut again about half an inch in either direction. This will leave you with clean ends on the cord.
2. Very carefully slice around the cord about an inch away from the end. You should be cutting through the insulating sleeve around the wires, but not through the wires themselves. Once you can see the wires, use your thumbnail to pull the sleeve off and expose the wires. Do this on both severed ends.
3. Modern headphone cords generally come with one of two kinds of wiring: either copper wire wrapped around an inner core (with more wiring inside), or a set of three or four colored wires. Which you have determines which step you should take next.

   For copper wrapped around the core:

   • Carefully unwrap the copper and pull it away from the core (without breaking the wires). Then use the knife to even more carefully slice the core casing about 1/4″ from the end of the outer sleeve. You’ll expose a very slender set of wires, probably with some white insulating fiber mixed in.
   • Separate the inner wires from the fibers and snip off the fibers as close to the “base” as you can.
   • Spread the wires so that they’re pointing in opposite directions.

   For colored wires:

   • Spread the wires apart so that they’re as far from each other as they’ll go.
   • Light the lighter or a match and hold it to one of the wires. The wires are colored because they’re coated with enamel; the enamel will melt if you apply enough heat. Repeat this step for each of the wires, being sure to blow out the flame on the wire if it gets too close to the “base”; you want to have some color remaining at the base so that you can tell which wire is which. Do this even for the copper-colored wires; many manufacturers use clear enamel on that wire too.
   • Use a very, very sharp utility knife to scrape away the remaining enamel (which will be black and lumpy). Ideally you’ll be left with gleaming copper wire. You can also use solvent to remove the burned enamel.
4. Now that you have clean, separated wires, bring the ends together. Twist together each set of matching wires – one from each end per pair – as tightly as you can.
5. Make sure that the exposed wires don’t touch outside of their assigned pairs. (This is the other reason for leaving enamel near the base of the colored wires; the enamel is non-conductive and won’t complete the circuit like the bare wires will.)
6. At this point, plug your headphones in and test them. If the sound is satisfactory, continue. If not:
   • For colored wires, red is generally left channel, green is right channel, and copper is ground. If the sound is coming through both headphones, but it’s very quiet, you need to adjust the ground connection.
7. Once you’re satisfied with the sound, cut short lengths of electrical tape (no more than 1/2″). On each twisted pair, set the wires in the middle of a length of tape, with the tip just inside the end of the tape, and fold the tape over, producing a “flag”. Do this more than once if the exposed wire is longer than the width of the flag.
8. If you can do so without affecting sound quality, lay the flagged wires along the insulated cable and tape them down. (This provides stability and means there’s less of a chance of you accidentally banging a connection around.)

And you’re done!