Ever wondered what your headphone cable looks like inside?
My sister’s wired headphones stopped working on one side whenever the plug was touched, so I ended up cutting off the pre-wired plug and fitting a new one.
But I was rather taken with the different colours of enamel insulation on the (very) fine wires…
Classic headphones just have 4 wires, a - and + for each side, but these have a microphone as well. Which doesn’t work any more as I only had a 3-contact plug on hand… she didn’t use it anyway. But the headphones work again!
In case you’re concerned about the rather messy job I did of stripping back the insulation, this is the unused stump of cable on the faulty plug - I stripped it and tinned (soldered) the ends to do a little continuity testing to work out which colour went to which plug terminal.
For scale, the grey plastic is about 3.8mm wide.