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Headphone repair puzzle.

H

hungryhawk

Hi All, I'm not an engineer so pardon my obvious ineptitude here but I need some help.

My Morning guy is rough with stuff and recently tore the wires out of my AKG k240 Headset. I've removed the outer layers of the casing and see that inside there are three wires showing. Two of the wires are red (one is connecting to a dot of solder) and the third wire is white and also soldered in.

Now the cord itself shows three pin type things one of which is connected to a short length of yellow wire (the other two pins are bare).

Can you help me put this back together? Thanks,
 
hungryhawk said:
Can you help me put this back together? Thanks,
Click to expand...

Don't remember of the top of my head which colours are which, but I think white is ground, red is right and yellow is left. You can easily check this with multimeter/continuity tester. On the 6.3mm/3.5mm jack, tip is always the left channel, ring is the right channel and sleeve is the ground.

On AKGs 240 a pair of wires comes out of the driver housing. You solder your yellow cable wire to the driver's yellow wire and solder white wires together. Than you solder the white wires (that you have together now) to the one end of the headband. The headband is actually two conductive steel wires which is a neat trick. You connect the red cable wire to the other connection on the headband. You need to know which wire goes where on the headband, but if the headphones are not totally smashed you should be able to figure that out from the "remainings". If needed, you can always open the other can as well.

That's it! Repaired these headphones a million times... And definitely prefer them for their neutral, "objective" sound.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
While we are on this topic, has anyone got any NOS cables for the older AKG K141 monitor series cans?

I've got some here that need their cables replaced, but AKG can't supply them. The new series have the little connector
plug on the actual headphone - these older cans have the cable directly connected to them.
 
A tip.. Easy way to trace out headphone wiring without taking everything apart.

You can pick up a cheap volt-ohm meter (VOM) at radio shack (get the one with a meter, rather than an lcd display). Buy a bag of cheap clip leads as well.

Usually white or black is the ground on headphone wiring, the other two colors left and right speakers on the headphones. Put the ohmeter on ohms on the rX1 scale, use a clip lead to connect the black probe to the ground wire on the damaged headphones. Now touch the red probe lead to one of the other wires. You will hear a click in one side of the headphones, letting you know which wire goes to which side of the headphone.
(Don't worry, the battery in the VOM isn't strong enough to cause any damage to the headphones.)
 
If I remember right, an important about the AKG headphones is that those wires are enameled. They may look like bare copper but you will have to burn off the enamel with a flame before you solder or else the connection will be poor.

I worked with a guy who would walk away with his headphones on and plugged in about once a month. That would pull the headphone jack at the bottom of the console at about 90 degrees and break the cable. To end this silly problem I made a short pigtail cord (a male, a few inches of inches of cord and a female). I secured the male end into the headphone jack and the jocks would plug into the female end. If a jock walked away wearing his 'phones the strain would be at the male-female connection on the pigtail and it would just pull apart with no damage.
 
Eng.Mike said:
If I remember right, an important about the AKG headphones is that those wires are enameled. They may look like bare copper but you will have to burn off the enamel with a flame before you solder or else the connection will be poor.
Click to expand...

True, but for an experienced engineer that enamel won't present a particular problem ;)


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
For the older 141s simply clip the plugs off the wires, strip, and solder them in place. Broadcaster's used to stock the cables. They aren't inexpensive, either.
 
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