[santiu]

Well, i finally got an iPod touch (mainly for skype-ing abilities) and i'm very happy with it. But i hate having to carry around both my ER-4's (for listening) and the Apple earbuds (for skype-ing). So i was going to graft my ER-4's onto the apple cable.

My plan was to de-solder the apple cable from the original driver (by disassembling the ear-bud), then cut the ER-4 twisted pair cable about an inch or so from the red/blue connector. Splice together and shrink wrap. Should be able to avoid dealing with messing about with the tiny shielded cable that way right?

Any tips, advice or caveats I should be aware of before they hit the dissection table? I've never tried soldering headphone cables (looks like a bitch), but i do have experience with SMC components and hand soldering bazillion pin micro-controllers. Thanks!!

 

[nikongod]

The wire in the cables is super thin, as you probably guess.

You should also note that the etymotic cables have a resistor in the little pod at the y-split in series with the drivers (actual etymotic er4 drivers are about 4.5ohms, the impedance given is basically just that resistor!). The resistor has large effects on the electrical damping of the driver which contributes strongly to their overall sound signature. Removing this resistor is probably a bad idea.

As an alternate idea:
Rather than cutting the cable for the etymotic headphones why not do the following:
cut the cable for the Ibuds just above the microphone/wherever you can get to L,R,&G. Solder a 1/8" female onto the ibud cable. Gets you the microphone, dosnt chop up the Etty cable. Best of both worlds.