Repairing a Headphone With One Side Not Working (Internally Broken Ground Cable in Jack)

ID: 218232

Description:

Steps:

  1. A mini document about a repair I had to improvise at Repair Café Palma. One of the two earpieces was not outputting audio; if it had been the one on the side opposite the cable entry, we would have suspected the cable that crosses from one side to the other through the headband, but in this case, the one on the cable entry side was failing.
  2. The earpiece Teardown has a trick: 1st, remove the sponge pad on the faulty side; it is press-fitted. On the outside, the black oval cover marked with a red arrow is just a cover; it should not be disassembled—if we do, we will break it and then it will have to be glued back on.
  3. By removing the sponge pad, we will see the earpiece speaker and a layer of gray sponge. There are no visible screws; the screws to disassemble it are hidden under that flat gray sponge layer. You have to dig around to locate the 4 screws. If you look at the photo in step 2, you can see their approximate location.
  4. I'm sorry I don't have many more photos, but it was not possible to take them.
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  5. Before disassembling further, we can test the earpiece speaker by applying voltage from a 1.5 V battery to the jack. A functioning speaker will emit a click when voltage is applied, while a non-functioning one will show no response.
  6. In our case, my colleague at RC removed the casing covering the speaker; it is press-fitted and glued, so it requires some effort to remove. I do not recommend removing it initially, as the speaker can be tested by applying a 1.5 V battery to the small connection PCB, which has 4 connections or wires.
  7. R Right.
  8. L Left.
  9. RG Right Ground.
  10. LG Left Ground.
  11. In this case, with the battery test, only one of the speakers produced sound when applying the battery to the jack, but both speakers worked when applying it to the PCB. The ground wire, G, is broken inside the jack, so a jumper (wire) can be made on the PCB since we have the other ground, G; both are common.
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  12. To create a jumper (wire) between LG and RG, the two ground G terminals, instead of soldering next to the already installed cables and risking them coming loose, I scrape the 2 copper tracks with a hobby knife and solder in the center of the PCB.
  13. Verified that it works, reassemble the unit.
  14. An improvised repair that will extend the useful life of these on-ear headphones.
  15. Other repair guides for headphones: Headphone
  16. End of the Repair Guide.
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