I screwed up my Pico, how do I avoid doing this again?

The headphone jack on my Pico is messed up, moving the 1/4 adapter (it's a Cardas, for what it's worth, and I tried two separate ones) changes the sound/volume. Not only can I not touch anything when listening to music, but apparently getting 'optimal' sound means changing the adapter's positon - twisting the adapter cable results in different sound quality. Yeah, I won't be doing much listening with my HD650s for a while, hello 555s.

On another note, the notion that an amp is 'required' for HD650 is overrated.

Now what I want to ask is this, what do I need to do to better take care of my equipment? This happened before when I had a 1/4 adapter go into the volume control unit for my old PC's Logitech speakers. I'm doing something wrong here or just have bad luck. It could be the adapter was heavy, specifically the stock Sennheiser one I used, but I always made sure to have a good portion of the cable on the desk and not off the desk putting pressure on the Pico.

What I definitely will do is never take out the 1/4 to 1/8 adapter, and just plug the headphones directly in the adapter. Or never even take out the headphones, I'll only use the HD650s with a Pico anyway. And when I upgrade the cables, I'll be buying ones that termniate in 1/8 so I'll just leave the headphones permanently connected to the Pico directly.

I think this stuff is covered in the warranty, right...? I feel so stupid, I might just buy another Pico.

What I hate is that my paranoia will push me to twisting the cable and changing its position everytime I listen to music with a new or fixed Pico, to make sure it's working properly, but that will probably make it worse... Maybe the Ritalin I plan on trying in the future will take care of this though.

I don't want to try and fix anything myself, I just know I'll end up making things worse.

The warranty is 3 years I think, I just e-mailed justin from Head Amp.


Sorry I don't know what you mean by 'trailing lead' or reducing sleeve' but here's the adapter:


Cardas 1/4 to 1/8 Adaptor @ HeadRoom - Right Between Your Ears


I was using the stock cable adapter, briefly then a solid one (that comes with the 555s), and just now got a Cardas one linked above.


Honestly I think I had less problems with the solid adapter, not sure I might do some testing when I get home, but I bought the Cardas ones specificically because I didn't want to stress the the Pico when I moved from the stock 650 cable adapter (which became defective, sound was a mess whether it was conntected to a Pico or iPod) to the solid one from the 555s.