Opinions: Repairing Shure E4C Headphones

I'm not sure this is something I felt I would ever put on TAT, but I felt it would be wasted on my personal blog - and it is technology after all!

While reviewing the Shure SE102's for The Register, my 3 year old E4C headphones finally decided to stop working - the left ear piece started cutting in and out. As these are out of warranty, I thought I'd have a go at repairing them myself rather than throwing away these £220 headphones. Looking around Google, I'm not the only one to have had this problem and all have resorted to throwing them away and buying another pair. I however, managed to repair mine - so if you have any friends throwing away some high quality headphones out, make sure you grab them before they hit the bin.

Now, I must add - this isn't the neatest of all mods, but I imagine some of you more skilled guys could do a better job than I. Besides, it's about quality - not looks, right? My coffee induced sweaty hands and fear of cutting myself with the scalpel meant my work was a little tatty.

Using a scalpel, I ran this between the top and bottom portions of plastic, where you can see a slight divide, slowly pushing through until I could separate the top from the bottom by a few mm. Try not to push too hard, but if you do pop through, you'll probably only cut the wire and not damage the driver itself. At this point I used a screw driver to leverage the two pieces apart to get to the insides. I did slightly damage the top portion, but I repaired this later with some side snips and the scalpel.

As you can see, it's a fairly simple setup. There is a metal ring that holds the two plastic components together - I imagine if I had cut this instead (with a dremel perhaps) the two pieces of plastic would have fell apart without damage and then could have been glued back together without being noticed. This done run a greater risk of damaging the driver though.

Once inside, I de-soldered the wire from the driver. I then clipped away the dodgy portion of the cable - about one inch. The old cable is very tight inside the plastic, but I managed to push it back through with a very small screwdriver. I then widened the hole using a Dremel and small drill piece. I then stripped away the new cable end and threaded it through. Before doing this, I took my scalpel and cleaned up any burred edges on the two plastic portions.

Once the wire was threaded through, I soldered it into place. I then tested that it worked as I didn't want to go piecing it together only to find the dodgy portion of cable was further down the wire. However, it worked perfectly. I then put the bottom plastic in place under the metal ring. The next stage was to get the glue gun out and blobbed it all over the wiring and inside the bottom plastic container. I then put the top back in place and used a zip tie around the whole thing and pulled it tight.

Personally, I don't mind the zip tie being there, so I've left it. But the theory was, once the glue had dried, I could remove the zip tie and clean up the glue with a scalpel, to bring it back to a close to original look.

Doesn't look too bad really, does it? I'll give it 24 hours and then I might remove the zip tie and clean it up. After all, I can always put a zip tie back on if it starts falling apart!

The final issue is that the left ear piece is now about an inch shorter than the right. A cleverly positioned knot soon solved this problem Happy hacking!

Posted By: Guest

you are a sad bastard captain spodworth..

Well, I removed the zip-tie today and it's held in place nicely. Trimmed away the excess glue with a scalpel and it's looking pretty good! And most importantly, it works

Can you share how to "un-screw" the ends ? I'm having the same problem myself right now and would love to make a neat repair.

whoops -- The metal surround -A- unscrews -- threaded normally and then you can pop off the ring -B- and the two halves come apart. See image http://screencast.com/t/kaGLKqxH0

There is a plastic tab holding the back in place.