I keep having to buy new headphones…I think the cabling into the jack becomes loose resulting in audio just coming from one ear, constantly requiring jigging about to try and get audio from both.
Is their anyway of repairing it? Or cutting off the jack, installing a new one?
yeah , that’s basically the only way, jut make sure you get left and right in the right position…
You recommend cutting off and rewiring the existing jack? Or buying new jack’s?
Can I bring to an electronics night for some help?
Buy a new jack. Those over-moulded ones are basically disposable. The molten plastic is injected in and around the connections, making them inacessible.
That jack has four sections…so you’ll have the interesting task of identifying all the correct wires! So maybe cut off enough wire with the jack that you can use a meter to test which wire goes where.
keep in mind the wires are probably enamel coated and will seem impossible to solder. should be able to burn off the covering really easily though with a really hot iron or a cigarette lighter.
Definately want some flux that you can use to clean the connections on the jack as they’ve often been sat about oxidising for a while.
Another solution: next time, buy Bluetooth headphones. These days they are not much more expensive, offer great sound quality, and Bluetooth technology has come a long way in recent years: it’s much more reliable with far better connection stability than the early days of Bluetooth. I now only use wired headphones with 1/4" stereo jack plugs and an adapter to 3.5mm when necessary. I found that repairing the wiring of other headphones to be very fiddly, time consuming and didn’t last. As they say, our kids won’t even know what wires are.
And if you want to give yourself a real treat, go for active noise cancelling. Your plane, tube and bus journeys will instantly become much more enjoyable.
I had some headphones with wire so thin it broke from just looking at it too hard so I replaced it with thicker wire.
The socket it plugs into could be dodgy too.
Of course bluetooth solves both those problems although I do have some bluetooth headphones that need repairing too.
Bluetooth are quite good.
Or get some with a removable jack lead (3.5mm socket on the headphones).
Then you just replace the cable in future.
Shouldn’t be too expensive on ebay.
My Ausdom Bluetooth headphones have an input jack too!
Then get a quality lead or make one
You all bunch of Geeks , making a 10 answer post about changing an headphone jack.
I love you all.
Q. How many Makerspace members does it take to change a headphone jack?
A. 36
1 to ask a perfectly reasonable, simple question on Discourse
3 to suggest alternative approaches to the problem
3 to point out why those approaches won’t work or are otherwise impractical
4 to criticise the people who said the approaches won’t work
7 to predict what will go wrong when you try one
1 to ask why you need a new headphone jack in the first place
3 to suggest an arduino-controlled automatic headphone jack connector
2 to cite the safety concerns
1 to call for a risk assessment
2 to ask about if there is an induction for headphone repair tools
14 to say they want that induction too
Ladies and gents I present our new headphonestech : )
It’s a common waste issue. It’s good to find solutions
I just replaced a pair this week because of a similar problem. I determined that the problem was up at the headphone end, though, making the left audio channel cut out. There was one three-core wire running to a circuit board in the left headphone, and connection passing this signal along to the right phone. There was something wrong with the left channel wire, because I could jiggle it at that end to make the left channel kick in. I cut a length of the cable off and resoldered all connections, and still had the same problem.
The problem with Bluetooth as far as I can see is that you can listen to music fine, but if you want to watch anything visual, you get synchronization issues, where the audio lags behind the picture unless you buy headphones and transmitters with the more expensive aptX low latency technology (about £60 minimum for the headphones, when I bought a pair about six months ago for watching television).
I haven’t really used my Bluetooth headphones much. I’ll try it
I assume the audio jack would solve this as well as using no power? We’ll see
If you’re going for a connector, Neutrik jacks are pretty much the best.
http://www.neutrik.com/en/audio/plugs-and-jacks/35-mm-right-angle-stereo-plug/
Trick is getting the strain relief right 
Edit : one thing I will mention though is that the neutrik jack’s dont always fit in phone sockets ! Best to test first
I’d recommend cutting it just ahead of the failed jack and soldering on a new one.
I’ve repaired my headphones before - ended up just replacing the entire cable as it was only £1 for a new one.
EDIT: HAVE YOU TRIED BLUETOOTH, I HEAR BLUETOOTH IS GOOD
I get through many headphones too and they all fail due to dodgy connection near the jack. I found that straight connections (rather than 90deg angled) and a bit of tapered sugru seems to help with longevity . Trick then is to avoid sheer angles, so put phone in pocket upsidedown if jack is on the bottom of the phone.
