Fixing Broken Massdrop x Focal Elex Headphones

[LuthierJeff]

Hello! I tried searching for info on this topic and found some, but not it great detail, so I thought I’d share my experiences for anyone who’s looking to repair their own Massdrop x Focal Elex, or who’s just curious. This started as a fun experiment, then became a small side gig for refurbishing these to resell, but my aim here is just to share info for others attempting the same thing. It seems that Focal NAIM might do repairs, but at a cost roughly equivalent to a new set of headphones. So, hopefully this post will help those looking to try their own repairs. If anyone else has experience with these, I welcome recommendations/constructive criticism on my process, as everyone could benefit. If this has been discussed a ton before, my apologies, and feel free to direct me to post in the proper forum…

To start, the problem with the Elex is they have a point of consistent failure at the ends of the voice coil wire, about a centimeter from where the wire terminates onto the solder pad that eventually runs to the jack. It may not be that common relative to their total production run (I don’t know the numbers), but it’s a predictable issue. I’m convinced the problem is with this black goopy stuff (silicone?) that covers the ends of the wire as well as the solder pad. Maybe they put it in there to stabilize the wire? I think it ends up sticking to the housing during large driver excursions, then snaps the wire on returning (or at least fatigues it), but that’s just an inference. I’ve seen a few where the goop-covered part is still stuck to the housing when I receive them. But of the dozen I’ve repaired so far, every one of them has broken in that same spot, and all have been able to be repaired successfully.

In short, to fix it you just cut off the broken end (or both ends if you’re feeling confident and want to obviate that type of failure in the future while you’re in there), and solder a replacement wire from the now-floating voice coil end to the solder pad. In practice, it takes a steady hand and some soldering experience. For me personally, I would NOT have done this well had I not had a lot of prior experience, it’s some finicky stuff. But for many people it might not be too much of a problem.

Here’s an overview of the steps I find to work well:

1. Disassemble and detach everything (pads, driver assembly, input jack, and magnet).
2. Trim off the broken voice coil wire ends, and remove them from the solder pad.
3. Cut off some replacement wire, and tin both ends.
4. Tin the end of the voice coil wire.
5. Solder the replacement wire to the solder pad and voice coil end.
6. Clean up and reassemble

I’ll make a follow-up post with photos and detailed notes, but at at a glance, here are the tools I use:

• Phillips 00 bit – 2 screws fastening the input jack to the housing.
• Torx T6 bit – 6 screws fastening the driver assembly to the housing.
• Torx T10 bit – 3 screws fastening the magnet to the driver assembly.
• Soldering iron – I use a standard chisel tip, although you could probably use whatever you have.
• Soldering flux – I happen to have some goopy flux that is excellent, as it is solid enough to hold to the wires. I haven’t tried liquid flux but I don’t think it’d work as well here. Also, I do consider flux necessary for this, as it’s way more effective to tin all wire ends before joining them together.
• Solder – Most anything should work, but I don’t recommend lead-free. I would worry the high temps required for that would risk damaging the fine voice coil wire. I use Cardas Quad Eutectic solder which I think is great, and has a nice low melting point.
• Solder wick – for cleaning up the terminal pads.
• Isopropyl alcohol and Q tips (not critical) – to clean off the remaining flux.
• Wire – I recommend small gauge to keep consistent with the voice coil gauge, but realistically a variety of sized should work. For mine, I pulled a single strand of 26.5 stranded wire, which measured 0.09mm diameter (the voice coil wire is even thinner). I have also used 26 gauge solid wire on the first pair I tried, and that also is still working, but I consider it less ideal as it’s huge compared to the voice coil wire.
• Side cutters and wire strippers
• Tiny pliers – I use them to pull the goopy stuff off of the solder pad.
• Tweezers – There’s a lot of small stuff here to hold on to.
• Magnifying glass – I used a jeweler’s loupe from my rock collection from childhood, haha.
• A multimeter – Gotta make sure the electricals are good!

 

[LuthierJeff]

Here are detailed descriptions (I totally understand if you don’t read this, it’s super long):

1. Pull off the ear pads
   1. Pry them off however you can, they snap in and seem pretty durable.

1. Detach the driver assembly (Torx T6 screws)
   1. The assembly should somewhat fall out. You can push it out by pivoting the ear cup if it doesn’t pop out on its own, although it will still be attached by the wires to the jack.

1. Detach the input jack (Phillips 00 screws)
   1. These are tiny as eff and I recommend putting them in a baggie or something.
   2. The jack sits on tiny indexing tabs, pull outward to pop it off, then upward to fully remove it.
2. Detach the magnet (Torx T10 screws)
   1. When you pull off the magnet, take care to move it straight away from the assembly. If you pull it off at a weird angle, or rotate it, it could potentially bump the voice coil, which is very delicate.
   2. So far as I can see, there’s no good way to precisely center the magnet when you re-attach it later when reassembling (nor are they precisely centered to start). The only reference points are the screw holes, so when that time comes, just center it as best you can visually and tighten the screws gradually.

At this point, you can either try to find the break and only repair the one spot, or say screw it and replace both ends, which is usually what I end up doing (or all 4 connections if doing both drivers). I figure if one connection fails, the others might also, and sometimes it’s just hard to tell which end has the break to begin with. Before the soldering madness, a photo of the goop, and one of a typical snap.

1. Clip the wire ends just beyond where the black goop ends. We want as much red voice coil wire as possible, but the goop doesn’t come off easily when tinning, and the wire’s far too delicate to scrape it off, so just trim it all up to that point.
2. Tear off the wire end from the solder pad. Also scrape/tear off the black goop on the solder pad. There’s also a translucent layer of god-knows-what on top of the solder, scrape that off as well (I grab it with tiny pliers).

1. Remove the solder from the pad, I suggest solder wick with some flux. I don’t recommend a solder sucker, as the jostling motion from that runs the risk of bumping the nearby voice coil.

1. Cut off some some replacement wire. I use about 11mm of 26.5 gauge Cardas wire. I strip it of it’s insulation, and then take one individual strand. Before, I had tried the full bundle, or even a single larger gauge wire, and realistically they worked fine. It seemed logical to me, though, to match the replacement wire as closely as possible to the coil wire. That keeps its stiffness more similar, and since it does move around with the driver, its mass and stiffness could matter? It does mean it’s harder to work with though.

1. Tin both ends of the replacement wire.
   1. If you have enamel-coated wire like I did, just pick it up with tweezers, and put a tiny amount of flux on one end. Melt some solder on the tip of the iron, and hold the fluxed end of the wire in the solder until they bond. At first, the wire will just push the solder out of the way, but after a bit (and maybe some more flux or a higher temperature setting) it should coat with solder.
   2. Do the same for the other end of the short replacement wire.

1. Tin the end of the voice coil wire.
   1. This parts is way more delicate, and has the added bonus of really sucking if you accidentally melt anything nearby, like the coil itself, or the driver surround.
   2. Same process as above, put a tiny amount of flux on the trimmed end of the voice coil. A toothpick works well as an applicator.
   3. Tin the tip of the wire, taking care not to bump anything, and also not to overheat and burn the wire itself. I haven’t done that yet, but it’s so dang thin that it’s probably possible to toast it. Reapply flux if necessary.

1. Solder the replacement wire to the solder pad.
   1. Apply flux to the pad. Use a small amount, as it sputters, and can coat nearby things that aren’t really cleanable (like the driver and coil).
   2. Use tweezers to hold the replacement wire, and put some solder on the iron, them solder the wire to the pad.
      1. At this point, the other end of your short replacement wire should overlap the new end of the voice coil by a couple or few millimeters. There’s usually not much length to work with, so you might have to nudge things around with a toothpick or the tweezer tip.

1. By far the hardest part for me until I did several of them: solder the wire tips together.
   1. Using a toothpick or tweezers, gently push the wires around until they are bumped up against each other, and they stay pressed against each other on their own. This can be hard, as they often spring apart. If one bends slightly to the left, for example, and the other to the right, if you nudge one to the opposite side, they’ll sort of press against each other just by virtue of their springiness, if that makes sense at all (attempt to show in photos).

1. Apply a teensy amount of flux where the wires overlap. You don’t need much at all (you could probably get away without any on this spot but I recommend it), and it can sputter, so you don’t want more than necessary.

1. Put a tiny amount of solder on the iron tip, and solder the wires together.
   1. Often, when removing the iron, one of the wires will pull away with it, and detach from the other wire. It can take many attempts, and each attempt puts more heat in the tiny coil wire, which we want to minimize.
   2. For this, I recommend using about as low of a soldering temperature as possible, if you have a variable temp iron. I put mine on the lowest it would go, which is 205ºC/400ºF. That’s enough to melt the Cardas solder I use (good stuff, that, and nice low melting point). The tiny (already tinned) wires will take to it immediately. If any of the ends are not tinned, you have to hover there for a while and it increases the chance of something going wrong.
   3. I’ve found the technique in removing the iron to be really tricky. Pulling the iron straight away from the wires often doesn’t work well, as it might pull one of the wires with it as it sticks to the solder blob, leaving the other wire hanging in the air. Best is to briefly touch the wires with your iron, then move longitudinally down the wire with your iron. Once you move the iron past the solder junction you can pull away gently. Basically, the more perpendicularly you move away from the wire, the more the wires tend to pull apart; the more parallelly (the internet assures me that’s a word) you pull away, the better your chances. First, a photo of the small amount of solder I use, you don’t need much. You’ll notice in the second photo that it doesn’t look like there’s much solder there at all on the wire. That is true, that’s mostly since it’s just a small wire to bond to. In a way, this is good. It means that there isn’t some big clumpy mass to flop around as the driver oscillates. Also, each one of these I have stress-tested afterward by blasting some really good music through them with big bassy moments (for reference, I use Bilo 2.0 by David Maxim Micic, it’s an flipping amazing album), and each one has held just fine.

1. Clean up any flux on the solder pads with a Q tip with a small amount of isopropyl alcohol. It’s not critical, but just nice to do.
   1. Don’t attempt to clean off any residues on the solder joint where the wires attach, they’re just too fragile. For example, if you look closely in my photos, you can see what looks like a tiny strand of cotton or something hanging off of the solder joint. If that happens, I just leave it there. I tried once to gently wipe stuff like that away with a Q tip, and the wires immediately snagged, and it was damn difficult getting it off the Q tip without breaking things. 0/10, would not try again.

1. Reassemble.
2. Rock the **** out!!!

Thanks for reading my absurdly long post, and please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! This stuff is really fun/frustrating, and rewarding/defeating! Choose your own adventure!

 

[Dogmatrix]

Headphone repair kit

 

[LuthierJeff]

Haha, that would certainly do the trick, and would also be much quicker than my methods.

 

[SnookHaus]

Thanks for sharing your tips and methods for repairing these. It sounds like a roll of the dice on the reliability of the Elex.

 

[LuthierJeff]

You're welcome, and thanks for the post! Yeah, I wonder if certain batches are more affected, stuff like that. Of the ones I've gotten, though, they've had serial numbers ranging from the 1000's to the 3000's so I'm not really sure. They sound great when working, though.

 

[IAmARaven]

Hey, are you interested in doing paid repairs? I've a broken pair that would need fixing but I don't have the time nor ability to do it myself. LMK!

 

[SnookHaus]

Hey, are you interested in doing paid repairs? I've a broken pair that would need fixing but I don't have the time nor ability to do it myself. LMK!

The pair that I ended up buying used somewhere else were repaired using a HiFiMan Sundara headband. They are very comfy. I hear LuthierJeff does great work!

 

[LuthierJeff]

Hey, are you interested in doing paid repairs? I've a broken pair that would need fixing but I don't have the time nor ability to do it myself. LMK!

Hi there, thanks for your interest! Absolutely, that would be a lot of fun and I'm totally down. I see your PM so I'll respond there in full, but thought I'd write here as well in case anyone else ends up interested down the line.

 

[LuthierJeff]

The pair that I ended up buying used somewhere else were repaired using a HiFiMan Sundara headband. They are very comfy. I hear LuthierJeff does great work!

Hey there, thank you so much for saying that, I really appreciate it! That's really good to know about the Sundara headband as well; I haven't gotten any units yet with broken headbands and whatnot, so it's good to know there are options in that case. Cheers, and thanks again!

 

[SnookHaus]

The pair that I ended up buying used somewhere else were repaired using a HiFiMan Sundara headband. They are very comfy. I hear LuthierJeff does great work!

Here is a pic of my Elex with the HiFiMan Sundara headband.

 

[LuthierJeff]

Here is a pic of my Elex with the HiFiMan Sundara headband.

Oh that is awesome! Thanks for the photo. I never would have guessed to see something like that. I've seen some broken-headband Elexes for sale on ebay but always passed since I had no idea what to do with it. Now I know!

 

[SpeedyClaxton4]

Hey, so the right driver in my Elex has been dead for a while. I finally opened it up hoping to just solder the break, but there does not appear to be a break that I can see. I'm assuming it's under the black goop?

Also just wondering if I could possibly source some replacement wire from an old IEM cable?

 

[LuthierJeff]

Hey, so the right driver in my Elex has been dead for a while. I finally opened it up hoping to just solder the break, but there does not appear to be a break that I can see. I'm assuming it's under the black goop?

Also just wondering if I could possibly source some replacement wire from an old IEM cable?

Hey there! That’s great you’re up for fixing it. Even without seeing it, there’s a high probability it’s within the goop, as that was the case with every one I’ve done. Usually I could find which terminal it was (but not always) by gently pushing on the goopy area with something like a toothpick. Usually, the good side would just kind of bow with the push, but the bad side would show a sharper angle in the goop where the fracture is.

As far as wire, I think you could get away with most anything. I’ve gone with the very thin wire approach, but on the first couple I did, one was thicker gauge wire, and one was braided wire, and those sets haven’t broken since, so whatever you’ve got would probably be fine.

Let me know if you’d like to talk more about it though! I’d be curious to hear how yours goes.

 

[LiNK2PAST]

Hey, how are you man? I hope you are doing great...

first of all, I would like to thank you for providing this detailed fix for the focal Elex, it's a lifesaver for almost everyone with broken headphones!!

unfortunately, I'm not that good with soldering, And I have one with the left side not working at all, I would really appreciate it if I can send you my headphone to fix it!!

I didn't know if it's better to ask you here or send you a dm, just let me know, please!!

have a nice day