Rewire headset for Cell

[aitikin]

I have a situation where I've destroyed the cheap headset that comes with my smartphone. The ear bud portion has been ruined to the point where it merely distorts, nothing else. I also have a pair of ear buds that sounded great until the connector started shorting out, and I was thinking that I could be able to cut the ear buds off and use the good ones on the headset by soldering wire one to wire two and taping it up with some electrical tape.

My big concern is I don't know if there'd be some issues with the fact that they're different ear buds.

[Scodiddly]

Speakers tend to be speakers, and there isn't much problem switching them around. I've done that a couple times to get a better "handset" for my cell phone - most recently I hacked up one of those Bluetooth earset things and put the guts into an old military handset - the speaker part worked just fine, though I couldn't use the mic in that handset (I just used the one that came with the Bluetooth thingy).

[aitikin]

Cool, thanks Scott. You were actually just the person I was hoping to get a response out of. Just wanted to be reassured I wasn't a moron by someone who knows a little more about it than I.

[Milkmansound]

I've done this before a few times. It will work!

Keep in mind that it can be tricky to get down to the copper on those cheap headphone cables. They are usually dipped in something or coated rather than isolated with a rubber jacket. I find if I stroke them gently with the tip of the iron I can get the jacket to melt off and gain access to the copper. Solder will not stick to those little wires unless you do something like this.

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Yup, you can do it, it's just a pain and they're probably not going to be very durable. I've never had a pair of cheap headphones I've restored last more than a few weeks tops. But I'm pretty rough on my crap.