Trying to repair a headset cable, I discovered that it doesn't look at all like the “ordinary” cables I used to repair. I was expecting to see, inside the cable jacket, four wires, each one in a wire insulation. Instead, there is:
- A wire with a white wire insulation.
- A sort of an orange/gold thread.
- Something which looks like semi-transparent, very narrow optical fiber, with red, green, or blue thread around it.
I would imagine that the semi-transparent fibers conduct electricity, but I don't get any conductance with a multimeter, including when I try to scratch the surface of those fibers. What are they? And what is the magic which happens inside the audio cables?
Best Answer
Those are normal headphone wires.
You can't strip the insulation off like you would with normal wire.
You would normally use a solder pot to strip and tin the wires all in one go.
A hobbyist won't have a solder pot handy, but you can still solder the wires.
Here's how:
The hot solder will melt the insulating lacquer and remove it.
It helps to have the solder standing by so that you can add solder as you are working with the wire.
Even the copper colored wire is insulated with lacquer - clear, in that case.
As happens, I was working on a blog post on this very subject when your question came up. I haven't published the post yet - I just finished making and preparing 37 photos for it and haven't written any of the text yet.
If you need a guide to replacing the plug on an Android headset, I've finished the blog post. You can read it here.