Splicing two 1/8" headphone plugs
Aug 18, 2007 at 3:09 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 2

hixidom

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First of all, I'm not very electronics-savy, so if I can make am not being clear about certain parts, please ask for me to elaborate.
Splicing two 1/8" headphone plugs...
I'm trying to do this so that I can connect the speaker jack of my computer to the microphone jack.

I found two headphone sets that I had stopped using because of speaker problems. I severed the cords of the two headphones. There are two cables per cord. In each cable, there are two sets of wires: A colored set and a plain set.

First, I just combined both sets in each cable and connected corresponding cables in each cord using solder. The result was recorded sound that was almost too quiet to hear.

After doing some research, I learned that there is more to the headphone cord than a bunch of wires: One cable holds positive wire, one cable holds negative wire, both cables contain ground wire.
So, with this is mind, I cut what I had already done and connected the positives of both cords, the negatives of both cords, and the ground wires of each cable in each cord together.

I thought that it would work fine now, but all I get is loud, horrible, noise. It sounds like bad Galaga sound effects or something, except it's much more erratic and loud!

So, what have I done wrong, or how can I improve my current "design"?

Thanks.
Andy
 
Aug 18, 2007 at 1:06 PM Post #2 of 2
did you insulate each individual solder joint? check each of the 3 conductors (it's a TRS plug, tip is left, ring is right, shank is ground) for continuity. If that looks good then it's probably due to bad solder joints
 

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