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Replace or fixing the cord for Sony MDR-SA3000 - how hard is it?

post #1 of 6
3/11/11 at 5:58am
Thread Starter 
My pair of MDR-SA3000 has started to lose channels depending on how I hold the cord,
so I suspect that the cord has a connection problem near the cord-headphone connection. The drivers seem fine when the cord is in the right position though, and I'd like to try to fix the cord.

My repair equipment is limited to a crappy soldering iron and a cheap multimeter, and I'm not a very experienced DIYer. But if it's an easy operation I just might be brave enough to do it myself. The question is - is it? I'm a bit wary of opening the phones in fear of breaking anything. Do the MDR-SA3000 break easily? And how tricky is the repair procedure?

I'd be happy to hear your experiences trying to fix or replace the cord for these (or similar) phones.
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post #2 of 6
3/11/11 at 6:11am

if it was on the plug side its easy - the headphone side is trickier - On the positive side, those headphones are single ended and you don't need to futz with working out how to do a Y joints - you'd need to open it up, work out which lead is which (multimeter to the connection and plug helps), then desolder the old cable (or fix up the joints) and solder a new one - canare starquad works quite well for this, and isn't too expensive - and solder on a plug. If you can solder at all, you should be able to do it quite easily.

 

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post #3 of 6
3/11/11 at 6:11am

if it was on the plug side its easy - the headphone side is trickier - On the positive side, those headphones are single ended and you don't need to futz with working out how to do a Y joints - you'd need to open it up, work out which lead is which (multimeter to the connection and plug helps), then desolder the old cable (or fix up the joints) and solder a new one - canare starquad works quite well for this, and isn't too expensive - and solder on a plug. If you can solder at all, you should be able to do it quite easily.

 

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post #4 of 6
3/13/11 at 9:21pm

Sorry but I hope my experience is helpful. I had a nice set of SA-5000 but later I got a case of intermittent signal and the problem was traced to the "Y" of the original cable.

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post #5 of 6
3/14/11 at 3:18am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the info, although I'm afraid it appears to be on the headphone side. But maybe I'll just take the plunge and try to open it. If I only hade some spare time...

By the way, I managed to find the service manual for MDR-SA1000, MDR-SA3000 and MDR-SA5000 available as a free download at the following address. I hope it is useful for anyone who finds this thread. (It appears that this article is now the first google result for "repairing mdr-sa3000")

http://safemanuals.com/annexe_SERVICE%20MANUAL_SONY_MDR-SA3000-_E.htm

Among other things, the service manual tells me that the drivers in MDR-SA3000 (Part number 1-542-603-11 - DRIVER (050F030)) are identical to those in MDR-SA5000. Nice! I didn't know that.
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post #6 of 6
3/15/11 at 12:41pm

The recabling isn't to hard from what I recall, there's a little bit of drilling involved though. Do be careful with the the SA3000 headphones though, they are pretty fragile plastic.

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