Earbuds: Replacing Plug?

Yep. I strip off the wire ends as best as possible. They're usually "tinsel" or very fine wires mixes with silk. Leave the silk in place. Then, take a piece of fine STRANDED hookup wire, and pull off a single strand of what I would guess would be #40 awg uninsulated wire. Starting with about 3mm up the the insulation (for support), wrap the wire around the tinsel until you reach the end of the tinsel. Wrap it rather tight as you're relying on a mechanical connection instead of a soldered connection. Then, just solder the wrapped wire to the connector terminals. For additional mechanical strength, some RTV (silicon rubber) works.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Concur with first part. Instead of RTV I use coloured hotmelt glue and some PTFE strip about .5mm thick , to wrap around the molten glue , to form a crude molding to the outer surface

In case its not too clear, for the tinsel join, you bend out an end 3mm or so before twisting on the fine wire , repeat for the other end and then bend back the ends till co-axial again

I found the biggest problem was tinning the fine wires, which are insulated with some kind of coating. To melt this coating you need a VERY hot soldering iron.

Once these fine wires are actually tinned properly, you can just solder them onto the plug as normal.

Gareth.

It helps with the finger twisting if you melt a tiny blob of hotmelt on each of the paired cut ends

ed

Hmm I just did this repair to some head hpones. In my case the tinning was easy, just a regular tin/lead solder and it burned off the insulation just fine. (I've got a bunch of male-male 3.5 mm patch cords and so I made the new end of the head phones into a female plug. Not exactly neat, but it made the strain relief part easy.)

George H.

hem

Have you considered simply replacing them with something better?

I have a pair of Logitech Ultimate Ears 600 earphones (which were a gift from the manufacturer in exchange for an Amazon review). Other than having somewhat microphonic cables, they are very good.

the last ones I dissected were made with bundles of fine wire, sort of like litz, but unbraided. You can just burn out the fibers mixed in with a soldering iron and fresh solder. Keep your face away from those fumes.

Per William Sommerwerck:

I've got a set of Shure E3C's

that I paid $125 for almost five years ago - and which I much prefer on the basis of fidelity.

The problem earbuds are the ones that came with my Samsung Note. Their claim to fame is a little inline dohicky that acts as microphone, volume control, pause, and skip-to-next. Even though I almost never use it in phone mode with the buds, they're handy at the gym because I can keep the device in my pocket and make adjustments with the dohicky....

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Pete Cresswell