Irregular-Expression

First thing first. Chop off the ear-buds and strip the wire. I used an X-Acto knife for most of the cutting work. For stripping the wire, I rolled it underneath the blade with just a little bit of pressure. Afterwards the insulation pulled right off with my fingers. Once the wire is revealed we see a colored wire, and a copper wire. The colored wire is the for the signal, green is left, red is right and the copper wire is ground.  Make sure you keep track of which is which.

(click thumbnails for full size images)

Next, I used a Bic lighter to burn off the acrylic insulation from the wires. A few things to note here. First, this stuff catches fire pretty quickly and will burn all the way up to the sheath and melt the sheath if you are not careful. Since we just want to burn the insulation off of the end of the wire let it catch fire and then blow it out quickly. After the initial burn, keep the flame of the lighter on the wire till it glows red hot. At that point, after cleaning it off with some rubbing alcohol it should be ready for soldering. Soldering these wires is a royal PITA. They are flimsy, don’t stay where you put them and getting solder to stick is difficult at best. I found one tip that suggested taking a piece of solid wire, coiling it up like a spring and soldering the headphone wire to it. The solid wire is way easier to solder onto the jack and the coil gives it some springiness so you don’t stress the joints on the jack too much and break them. I took this a small step further and used a pair of pliers to clamp the coil down on the headphone wire after I slid it inside the coil which held it very well while soldering the two wires together.

I know it’s not the prettiest soldering job in the world. But I’m really just a beginner. I trimmed the melted insulation on the solid wire with the xacto knife after this pic was taken.

Next. Heat shrink! This stuff is awesome. Use it to insulate the wires from each other and help protect the joints. I used heat shrink very liberally in the mod. Make sure you leave some way to tell which wire is which. I used different lengths of the solid wire to help me keep them separate.

Final step, soldering on the shiny new headphone jack. I got mine from Fry’s. I’m sure there are 1000 places you can find them online too. Don’t forget to slide any extra heat shrink and the jack sheathe on BEFORE you start soldering it all together. I forgot and had to take it apart and do it again.