[chucklds]

I let others in my family use my Grado SR60 headphones, and sure enough, the wires got all twisted around, and when I went to use them one day the right side had no sound.  I tried fiddling with the wires while listening to see if I could locate where the problem might be, but didn’t find anything.  I didn’t want to send them back to Grado and pay all the fees, so I decided to rewire them myself.
 
This is how I repaired them:  To open up the cans I heated the grill side with a hot air gun (not too hot), and then used the back end of a clothespin to open them.  I wrapped a rubber band tight around the clip side of the clothespin to help give more pressure.  The cans come right open nice and clean.  Then I unsoldered the original wires and marked where the red and white wires go as positive and the blue wires as negative.  I bought 25 feet of 18 gauge stereo wire and a ¼” stereo jack from radio shack.  I wanted to make the wiring look nice and I didn’t have any outer cable jacketing, so I used some coax cable TV wire that I had around the house and pulled out the inner wiring. (clamp the inner wire in a vise or to a thin shelf and then pull on the outer jacket) Now for the hardest and most tedious part, pulling the wires through the jacket.  You can push one stereo 18 gauge wire through, but not two.  It may have been easier to use a thinner gauge, but I wanted the benefit of using the 18 gauge. I cut the jacket 6’ long, and cut the two 18 gauge wires I was going to pull through 7.5’ long(this length allows for the split going to right and left cans and extra for soldering).  I marked each end of one of the wires with a black marker so I would know to use that one for the left can.
 
I then pushed through one 18 gauge wire.  Then I stripped the ends of this wire and of the two wires that I was going to pull through.  Then I soldered them all together so that they were together but not too lumpy to pull through.  Now I could pull through the cable jacket the two wires by pulling on the other end of the single wire I pushed through.  This took a long time because it would only go through a little at a time, and then I had to keep straightening the jacket as it would lump up as I went along.  Once I had it pulled through I left two inches of 18 gauge wire past the jacket on the jack end.  First I stripped and tinned the wires on the jack end and soldered them to the jack using the marked wire for the middle connector(which is the left side for the can), and the other wire for the outer connector.(you can read more about how to do this on line)  I had to pull the cable jacket back down a little before screwing the cover back on the jack so it would be covered.
 
 I then used a black cover that I screwed off of another old ¼ jack that I had to slide down to the cable jacket where the split was for the wire going to the cans(the picture doesn’t show this, sorry).  Then I cut two more pieces of the cable jacket to 12.5” to cover the wires at the split going to the cans.  These slid easily over each of the one 18 gauge wires going to the split and into the black cover. 
 
Now all I had to do was trim the excess 18 gauge wire to the right length to reach the soldered connections in the cans, strip and tin the ends, and solder.  The marked wire went to the left can.  Before this though, I pulled a wire tie real tight on the end of the cable jacket going into the can and trimmed it, that way it prevents the wire from being pulled off the soldered connection.  That is the same thing Grado did on their wires.  I tested everything to make sure it was working and to my delight it was! Then I put the cans back together, heated up the grill sides again and pressed together for a tighter fit.  Done!!!!
 
I was so glad to get my Grados working again!  They sound great and the wires are much more solid.  No  more letting the family use these!