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General discussion

Help With Headphones

Jul 30, 2005 2:27PM PDT

ok, so i have a broken pair of bose triposrt headphones i bought off a freind the plug broke off the cord so theres just a bunsh of wires and i do not know how to work with headphone wires any suggestions

Discussion is locked

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The wiring scheme
Jul 30, 2005 7:21PM PDT

Here you go:

http://www.headwize.com/faqs.htm#access

It's a picture of the headphone plug. This configuration is called Tip-ring-sleeve or TRS. The wiring is tip=left, ring=right, sleeve=ground. Frequently ground is the black wire, but It may be different with your headphones. If you have the original, broken-off plug, you can test which color wire is tip, ring, or sleeve using a continuity tester (a function of most decent multimeters). The link above has more details.

These should work (some $3.99 Radio Shack plugs):
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F011%5F003%5F001%5F004&product%5Fid=274%2D858
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F011%5F003%5F001%5F004&product%5Fid=274%2D1547
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F011%5F003%5F001%5F002&product%5Fid=274%2D866
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F011%5F003%5F001%5F002&product%5Fid=274%2D139

(Soldering accessories are not included.)

Or if you have a cheap, old, broken, and unused pair of headphones available, you can snip off the plug and splice it to your headphones. This might work well, or it might not, depending on your skill. YMMV.

If you visit Radio Shack, ask to demo the $20 Pro35a headphones. Check them out--they're rebranded Koss KTX-1s (same 60-ohm drivers as the $15 KSC-75). They sounds great, and according to the guys at head-fi.org, sound much better than the TriPorts. They won't be as isolating or as comfy as the Bose, but if you don't want to go through the trouble of fixing your broken pair, you may want to demo these.

Check out their interesting and funny thread about the Triports:
http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=127609&page=5

They're such headphone snobs Happy. But they're helpful.

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thank you
Jul 31, 2005 3:27AM PDT

thanks for the help i am really glad you helped me