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Going to trim the cable of my DT880, need some advice

post #1 of 7
3/28/11 at 5:21pm
Thread Starter 

I have soldering experience but never trimmed a cable before, was just curious what i would need to know.  How do i tell which wire is audio left and right?  What about the ground wire, are the ground wires on the dt880 grounded at the plug end, or the headphone can end? ( Does it need to be both? ) 

 

Something like this should be relatively easy, I suppose?  Just snip off the desired length and resolder the wires to a new adapter right?  Any tips or advice is appreciated.

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post #2 of 7
3/28/11 at 10:25pm
Be careful of enamel on the wires. They may seem to be stripped of insulation, but then prove difficult to solder. Use nail polish remover (or acetone or mineral spirits) to remove enamel before soldering.

I'm not sure of the color conventions Beyerdynamic uses for its wires. Hopefully, someone will come in and tell us. You can use a battery to see which driver moves, though. A minute of experimenting with an AA cell should show you which is which.

You can also open up the cups to see which wires are connected to the drivers.

For the plug (IIRC), the very tip is left. The middle or ring is right. The sleeve, the part closest to the body of the plug, is ground.

Good luck! smily_headphones1.gif
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post #3 of 7
3/28/11 at 11:01pm
Thread Starter 

Thanks for the quick reply, Eric.  I just purchased a few Rean NYS231BG plugs so hopefully sometime next week I can show off my work hehe.

 

 

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post #4 of 7
3/31/11 at 4:47pm
Thread Starter 

Im failing pretty hard at it.  I am really not sure what I am doing wrong but sound wont come through no matter what I try.  The exposed wires dont seem to be allowing anything to come through when soldered onto the new adapter.  I've tried all possible combinations, there seem to be three separate wires, I tested each one as ground just to be sure, and the other two at L and R and vice versa for them, nothing worked.  I get a blip...blip...blip... sound no matter what I try.

 

what am I doing wrong?

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post #5 of 7
3/31/11 at 10:44pm
Did you strip the enamel? That stuff is a pain.
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post #6 of 7
3/31/11 at 11:22pm
Thread Starter 

The problem was bad adapter plugs for sure, I've no other explanation.  However, I am sending them off to Zombie X for pro modding lol 

 

>.>  clearly i fail at it :P

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post #7 of 7
4/1/11 at 6:59am

I soldered new mono jacks onto my old sennheiser HD280 cable since they were both glitchy. Bought the only mini-mono plugs I could find and the quality wasn't that great. Not sure if it was me heating the shielding too much on one of them so a piece of connecting plastic melted (didn't look bad) or if the contact was glitchy from the start, but I could only get signal when I pressed the shielding in a certain direction.

 

What I meant to say is that headphone cable can be a pain to solder (mine were, solder wouldn't stick to cable) and you might have damaged the contact in the proccess, or the contact was faulty from the start.

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