Something like six years ago I bought a pair of Koss PortaPro
headphones. Yeah, yeah, they're overhyped meme headphones in some
online circles. I make no miraculous claims regarding them, they
simply sound clearly above average for the price to me (I forget
exactly what I paid for them, at a physical Clas Ohlson store
in Sweden, but I remember thinking it was surprisingly cheap).
The build quality is not exceptional, but perfectly reasonable
for the price. The foam earpads got stretched out and saggy over
the years. Because they are overhyped meme headphones, it was easy
to buy after-market replacement pads online, even larger/plusher
"upgrade" pads, which I appreciate. But recently the cable on my
pair wore out near the jack. For a few months it was still usable
- very occasionally the audio would cut out or get scratchy, but
if I wiggled the cable a little it would quickly be fine again.
The situation slowly but surely got worse, of course, and eventually
they became basically unusable.
I bought a replacement jack to rectify the situation, since the
headphones were otherwise perfectly serviceable and soldering
a jack to some wires is not especially hard. I "splurged" on a
high-quality gold-plated jack from Neutrik, for all of something
like 5 EUR. The installation was, in fact, a lot more difficult
than I was used to. The wiring on the PortaPros is not your
typical copper wire with a thin plastic sheath which you can cut
and strip easy peasy. It's something more like what is often called
"magnet wire", in that there's just a very thin transparent enamel or
whatever coating over the conductor, but unlike typical magnet wire
is not a single solid conductor (which would obviously be entirely
unsuitable for headphones) but some very finely stranded stuff.
The two wires for each channel are also entwined around some kind
of tough nylon or whatever cord, presumably to absorb shock if they
get snagged on a doorknob or whatever. The overall impression is
of much higher build than "just plain wire", but man, it's a huge
pain in the ass to solder by hand. That nylon shock cord likes
to burn and get crud everywhere. The enamel coating needs to be
carefully scraped off with a sharp knife edge. When I finally got
a passably neat connection soldered up for both 'phones I realised
that, of course, like I an idiot, I had neglected to first slide on
the wire-side part of the jack housing, so I had to lop it off and
start again, further shortening the already on-the-short-side cable.
I tried again the evening after got it done properly. The new jack
works great and will hopefully do so for at least another six years.
Even though this wasn't quite as quick and easy as I initially
expected, it was still very doable, and it's so nice to have the
option to do basic repairs like this yourself at home on things you
use every day. The increased ease of debugging and repairing wired
stuff compared to wireless stuff more than makes up for the slightly
reduced convenience, in my opinion. Even if it hadn't worked out,
for the low cost of a replacement jack it was well worth rolling
the dice before immediately buying a whole new replacement set.
