Chosen Solution
I have some headphones that I would like to hold onto. A pair of Panasonic RP-HTX7 lime green. They were my first foray into audio world. Unfortunately two years ago I stepped on it. Initially I thought the damage wasn’t that bad. But I noticed that I was occasioninally having one side or the other cut out. I found out it would happen depending on how the cord moved. The tip of the plug was loose and was causing it to lose contact with the base. This continued until it fell out completely from the sleeve. I don’t have the tip for the headphone jack for this pair but I do have other pairs of devices that I could pull it out from. If I did that is there a way I would just slide the tip in and have it work? Would I just put some form of adhesive inside and shove it in? Everything else on this pair is completely fine so I’d like to be able to fix it without cutting wires.
Hi @lajamerr , Short answer is No. You cannot repair a broken 3.5mm (1/4") plug. The only fix is to replace the plug. To do this you have to cut the cable. The easiest way to do this if the cable is still connected is as follows: Cut the cable 50mm (2") from the end of the plug. Remove the sheath from the cable coming out of the plug to expose the wires and then strip the insulation from the wires about 7mm (1/2") from the cut end. Use an Ohmmeter to identify which wire goes to which jack connector, sleeve, ring and tip (in your case missing, so 1 wire won’t be able to be tested). I don’t know your headphones but if it has a 4 ring jack then it is sleeve 2, sleeve 1, ring and tip) The convention with 3 pin jacks is that the left speaker is connected to the tip, the right speaker is connected to the ring and the common for both speakers is connected to the sleeve.
Once you know which colour wire goes to which connector, (write it down), strip the sheath off the cable coming from the headphones to a suitable length and then connect the wires to a new 3.5mm plug. There are plenty of videos on You Tube that show how to do it.
