I’ve had a pair of Sennheiser HD 212 Pro headphones that have been out of commission for almost two years thanks to my dog getting ahold of them as a puppy. Thankfully he only chewed up the wire, which is easily replaced via Sennheiser’s laughably out of date, clunky, and understocked web store (seriously, it has “2002″ in the page title and the only non-replacement items for sale there are aviation headsets). So I ordered a replacement cable and some replacement cushions, but while I was waiting on those to arrive, I decided to check into repairing my current cable. I’m somewhat technically competent, but I haven’t soldered before and had no intention of buying a soldering gun to attempt to repair something with a functional replacement on the way. After some trial and error (and some frustratingly useless search results), I’ve successfully repaired the cable with no soldering and for only $3.99 plus tax. Here’s how:
Supplies
- 1/8″ Mini Stereo Phone Plug (or 1/4″, according to your preference)
- Scissors or pocket knife
- Lighter
- Phillips-head screwdriver (small/medium)
The first thing you’ll need is a replacement tip. I’m sure there are plenty of options, but for the sake of time and convenience, I just went with one from Radio Shack (Model #: 274-869). To save you some time and from having to deal with the idiots that staff most Radio Shack stores, the part you need isn’t on the shelves, but is in one of the pullout drawers. Hopefully you won’t have to deal with an employee who asks what you’re looking for, takes the model number, and proceeds to gawk at a trailer for some video game playing on an HDTV at the back of the store before asking you if you’ve found what you’re looking for a few minutes later while his two cohorts stare at a sales terminal together like a pair of dogs that have just been shown a card trick.
You’ll want to cut your headphone cable to whatever length you desire (I’m probably going to go back and make mine much shorter so it’s more appropriate for portable use). You will then want to strip about an inch of the cable so the underlying wire is exposed. Before moving on it’s a good idea to go ahead and slide the outer shell of the plug and the plastic sheath around the headphone cable so you don’t get ahead of yourself.
The replacement plug itself comes with no documentation, so the user reviews on Radio Shack’s site are actually somewhat useful in that regard. The problem is that all of the user-supplied instructions assume you’re working with three different pieces of cable and upon stripping the Sennheiser cable, you’ll discover that it has four. My 212′s had a green cable, a red cable, and two gold cables. As anyone who has ever hooked up any audio equipment will know, red is the right channel, so by the process of elimination that makes the green the left channel (which is more typically either white or blue). The remaining two cables are grounds and can be twisted together to form one. Before attaching the cables to the three terminals, you’ll want to make sure they can achieve a good contact. Using a soldering iron, this is a process referred to as “tinning,” but as I’m solder-free, I just took a lighter to the exposed cable, burning off the twine wrapped with the cable. Give the cables a twist and you’re ready to attach the cables to the terminals. They are attached as so:
Short terminal: Green (left) cable
Medium terminal: Red (right) cable
Long terminal: Gold (ground) cables
Go ahead and plug in the headphones and make sure everything sounds good before sliding the sheath over the wires and screwing the outer shell into place. Once you’ve screwed the shell in, you’re done. Hopefully this helps somebody out since most of the search results I found assumed soldering skills and weren’t specifically for Sennheiser headphones with their “extra” wire.
