[jpover]

Quote:

  would it be a good idea to replace the stock headphones entirely with some 22-gauge speaker wire and bypass this enamel crap entirely?
 
i bought some cheap radio shack 22awg speaker wire; it seems like the stock M50 cables are at least 24gauge, so it should be an improvement, no?

 
I'd avoid replacing the factory wires if possible.  Having to add new wire turned this job from less than an hour into half a day (I only recently learned to solder effectively.). 
 
I did not notice a sonic difference between the factory wire and the heavier wire that I used to replace it.

 

[inertianinja]

  Quote:
 
I'd avoid replacing the factory wires if possible.  Having to add new wire turned this job from less than an hour into half a day (I only recently learned to solder effectively.). 
 
I did not notice a sonic difference between the factory wire and the heavier wire that I used to replace it.

 
i'm definitely trying to avoid it. i'm also new to soldering, and despite a million attempts, I cannot get the stock enameled wire clean enough to tin. Some have suggested cleaning it with a knife or sandpaper, but the wire is too tiny and brittle.
 
Hell, the cables are so thin that i'm having trouble even stripping them without shredding the wire underneath. My wire stripper only goes down to 22. The 22ga speaker wire will be much easier to work with. 
 
I got some new, higher-flux solder and i'm going to give it another shot with the stock. At some point I'm not going to have any choice but to recable, or buy some M50X!

 

[Mad Max]

I strip the wires with my teeth, much easier than using a wire stripper to me.
Later I tried tinning the wire without stripping it and my way just doesn't require stripping it first, so hey, I don't even bother anymore, hahaha!  Sorry to hear you are having so much trouble, surely you are doing something wrong.  You can always recable the headphone outright with Mogami 2893 or Canare mini-quad mic cable, I don't remember its part number.  Cheaper than going M50x.

 

[inertianinja]

  I strip the wires with my teeth, much easier than using a wire stripper to me.
Later I tried tinning the wire without stripping it and my way just doesn't require stripping it first, so hey, I don't even bother anymore, hahaha!  Sorry to hear you are having so much trouble, surely you are doing something wrong.  You can always recable the headphone outright with Mogami 2893 or Canare mini-quad mic cable, I don't remember its part number.  Cheaper than going M50x.

 
your way was putting the cable directly into a blob of solder on the iron without stripping it?

 

[inertianinja]

Success!
 
This was my first time soldering. I tried like hell to get the stock cables tinned, but just couldn't make it work. I used the stock cable to practice, and went through almost the entire thing with bad results, trying every trick I could find on the internet.
 
Finally I picked up some 22awg speaker wire from Radio Shack, and of course it tinned very nicely. So I decided to recable the whole thing...if I couldn't do it, I was screwed anyway because I couldn't work with the stock cable.
 
I first disconnected the stock wiring from the driver by putting a tiny drop of solder on the iron, pulling lightly on the wire, and touching the iron to the existing solder joint just long enough for the wire to come free. To attach the new wire, I reversed the process - put the tinned new wire on the existing solder on the driver, put a tiny amount of tin on the iron (so it wouldn't overflow on the other joints), and touched it just long enough for the new wire to join with the existing solder.
 
Joints on the new headphone jack were very clean thanks to the clean wire, and I put some heat-shrink tubing around them for protection.
I used some hot glue to keep the jack from spinning in the hole.
 
I had to mutilate the driver holder in order to get everything to fit, but i was able to very gently get everything into place.
 
Also took this opportunity to upgrade to the HM5 ear pads.
 
Everything works! not bad for my first solder project.
Thanks to everyone for their help!
 

 

 
EDIT: in retrospect, i would have separated the two wires on the left of the photo so that they could have flexed more easily.
 

 
Now I have to clean up my desk.

 

[jpover]

Nice job!

 

[Mad Max]

   
your way was putting the cable directly into a blob of solder on the iron without stripping it?

 
Later on, it was.

 

[NeonicZyfr]

Would this work with the ath t400?

 

[inertianinja]

I wanted to add one more thing regarding getting solder to stick to enameled wires:
 
I mentioned before that I tried to get the stock cable wires to clean (so solder would stick) by burning, sanding, etc, but nothing worked, and the wires wouldn't tin.
 
Well, I took this project one step further and adapted a cable with a mic/iphone controls to work...it required swapping the cable's mini-stereo jack with a 3.5mm jack. This cable also had enameled wires. I very quickly flashed them with a lighter, but not so much that they got black crap on them.
 
I didn't even try to tin them. When I attached them to the new jack. I just basically drowned them in blobs of solder. The solder stuck to the leads on the jack just fine, so the cable's wires were just trapped in the blobs. Happy to report that this worked nicely.
 
(BTW the cable was a replacement cable for a set of sennheisers that I found on amazon)

 

[Mad Max]

Would this work with the ath t400?

 
Most likely.  I've seen the inside of T200, and the other Tx00 headphones are probably similar/better, so that is why I guess so.  Your photo would be more useful if it would show more of the baffle and cup interior, all of it if possible.

 

[NeonicZyfr]

Most likely.  I've seen the inside of T200, and the other Tx00 headphones are probably similar/better, so that is why I guess so.  Your photo would be more useful if it would show more of the baffle and cup interior, all of it if possible.

Here are better pictures of it.

 

[cereal]

Does anybody know where I can find this panel mount jack? It's black and I think that'd be a better look and less conspicuous on my M50's. I'm not terribly concerned about quality in this particular case– not that I know of it's quality but I found this on Google Images and it links to an eBay auction for the chrome one that everybody in this thread is using. 


 


This one looks to be about the same size but black.


 


TL;DR - where to buy this?


 

 

[NeonicZyfr]

Here are better pictures of it.

Still need to know if it will work. I do not want to take it and strip the wires and find out it doesn't work.

 

[Mad Max]

Oh, this thread.
Yeah, you can do the mod, but you might have to leave the 3.5mm socket partway out, like I did with my M50:
 

 
 
To secure it, make a couple of notches on opposite sides of the black plastic part and hold the socket in place with a bit of superglue.  Then apply epoxy on the inside of the cup where the black part is and let the cup sit undisturbed 24 hours for the epoxy to reach its full strength, and you will be set to go.
I do not recommend using a huge socket like the one in cereal's (and some others') posts, use the Lumberg jack.  Partsexpress (among a fwe others) carries the Lumberg as well, but under their own name.

 

[UJ95x]

Can't believe this thread is still going...Came here a couple of years ago to get help with it, but just this week got around to actually doing the mod 

Also got the Brainwavz HM5 pads because the stock ones would hurt my head after about an hour of usage. A little big, but far more comfortable