Flux is such wonderful stuff...
Both the Koss "The Plug"s earbuds and my AT&T telephone headset had been acting up. The symptom in both was the same: when the cord "jiggled," I would get a burst of static. My guess was that the cause was a tenuous connection between the wire(s) and the mini-plug.
I had already operated on the earbuds once, and had just about decided to toss them and purchase another set, but, my, um, frugality won out, and I decided to attempt to effect one more repair. I am quite fond of the headset - it has a nice boom microphone, a comfortable head band, and a mute switch that works quite well, so I was reluctant to toss them - both because I thought it would be difficult to find a replacement, and that, er, thriftyness thing.
For the headset, I had to cut away the molded cover over the plug / wire junction. Since I had already worked on the earbuds, all I had to do was remove the shrink wrap I had previously applied.
Fortunately, I remembered the trick from the previous repair of the Koss' to remove the lacquer coating before attempting to solder the wires to the plug.
I also dipped the wire ends into a tin of non-corrosive flux before attempting to solder them to the plug, which made the soldering process much easier than my previous attempt. It amazes me how much more easily the solder melts and adheres when there is a bit of flux applied to the parts to be soldered.
I am happy to report that both the earbud and headset repairs were successful, leading to happiness of both my ears and my wallet.
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Posted by David at September 19, 2006 09:15 PM