Q-jays recabling

You pull them out in the back, like where the rubber meets the plasic of the shell, It's glued together. But be careful, you might break the soldering by doing so.

Opening any kind of IEM is bad news bears.  I'd only do that if you don't mind having them never work again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonasklam 

You pull them out in the back, like where the rubber meets the plasic of the shell, It's glued together. But be careful, you might break the soldering by doing so.

Thanks, this helped a lot. I already broke a pair trying to open them up :(

Quote:

Originally Posted by funkyfunk 

Thanks, this helped a lot. I already broke a pair trying to open them up :(

No problem mate,

Did you get them opened intact? and fixed maybe?

yip, i did. will post some pictures later. didnt have time to procure a cable though and im still pondering whether i should solder an iphone inline remote onto it. Problem lies in procuring a decent donor.

there i did it. After some trial & error it is best to grip the rubber back on the sides quite strongly and pull it out backwards from the casing. if you're lucky you will leave only minor marks. If not you might consider melting and reforming the rubber but be careful, apply moderate temperature (like slightly heating the tip of a flat screw driver with a lighter or torch and press onto it) or apply some liquid rubber like plasti-dip.

tools used:

shrink tubes, solder tin, pliers, helping hands etc.

After many trials & errors i chose a 2$ pen-style soldering pen, connecting the two pins with a little force to a 5$ dc adapter and set it to 9 Volt.

pic from when i was modding my etymotics hf-2

its done:

my gf's vs. mine

sorry for the crappy pics. will upload more and more detailed ones when i get back home...

preparing the casing:

The cable is held by a plastic thingy (please forgive my english, corrections appreciated :) ) at the bottom of the rubber cap and is glued to the cable. you can remove it by pushing it through the bottom hole at the rubber back (might take a lot of force).

now you might consider soldering your cable onto the existing ones or soldering it to the driver itself.

** be sure to put on the desired shrink tubes and the rubber cap onto the headphone wire before you solder I ALWAYS FORGET!!! be sure to have them at the right length and size to be able to put it into and bend them inside the rubber cap**

I have found the latter to be more easy (still quite hard), because there is very little room inside the casing. to solder it onto the driver, remove the green plastic coating around the spots the cables are connected to using a sharp screw driver. then solder your cables onto it. It will require precision and a bit of soldering experience. I wasted two q-jays drivers in the process  :'(

strain relief:

The q-jays offer no strain relief at the casing! no way to make a knot, so i tried to make one with different shrink tubes, but after many attempts i gave up on that.

putting it all together:

you might want to file the connecting parts on the rubber cap a bit. apply a little bit of super glue but dont use an overly strong one (if you ever want to take it apart again) nor use too much of it for it will result in a mess.

Rubber-cap bottom:

if your shrink tube leaves a little room for movement or air to flow through, it might impair the hearing experience or the durability. apply some glue or some hot glue (very delicate, i chose to do both) around the bottom at the cap

Youre done

congratulations

you have spend a considerable amount of time, but you will be rewarded with a DIY satisfaction

epilogue:

i wasted hours doing this mod. I wasted two drivers in the process. economically-wise its not worth the effort. For my remaining pair i would like to try to just resolder an iphone headset to the original cable below the casing. I hope to maintain some degree of strain-relief and stability. I will open another thread for this as im regarding it as a more general easy approach.

thanks for reading :)

Woaw mate! Well done :), they look like they are very durable now actually. Thanks for the pics.

What tips are you using btw?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonasklam 

What tips are you using btw?

I'm not sure. The blue ones could be etymotics tri-flanged tips for the HF-2 or from my SE420 and for the black bi-flanged ones I suspect they came with Klipsch Custom IEMs. The black ones fit me perfectly. Unfortunately so do they for my gf :/

will post detailed pictures tonight