Beats EP Wire Replacement Repair

It is possible to replace the entire wire/cord of the Beats EP headphones. You may want to do this if the wire was broken from the middle or if you simply do not wish to solder a new jack plug. Wire replacement usually involves opening the cup on one side. However before you can open the cup, you will have to remove the ear-pad. Since the ear-pad is stuck with double-sided adhesive tape, it may be damaged when you detach it, and this is one downside of taking this repair route.

Replacement wires are available and they cost as little as two pounds on the auction site. These are usually jack to jack type with one side having a 4-contact jack, and some also have in-line remote controls as well. A nice long wire such as this could be adapted for use with these headphones, and I was very tempted to go this route but it would mean spending more money.

4-Conductor Wire Replacement

This is how the original wire is connected. There are four conductors coming into the cup.

In these Beats EP headphones, the wires coming into the cup consist of green, red, copper, copper, coloured wires. The copper-coloured wires connect to the same point in the jack plug which is common ground. Consequently, many manufactures employ only 3 wires in their cords, with only one common ground being shared.

Each driver has a small printed circuit board for wiring purposes and as you can see from the wiring diagram, it is fairly simple and straightforward. The PCB simply allows the red and copper pair from the other cup to be joined with the incoming red and copper pair.

3-Conductor Wire Replacement

If the wire has 3-conductors consisting of only one common ground, then this modification works well.

Due to my poverty-stricken publisher lifestyle I decided to use a recycled wire as the replacement. This is just a plain wire without an in-line remote, and as you can see it has only three conductors since there is only one common ground.

When using a wire with three conductors, the common ground has to be shared by both drivers; hence all I needed to do was to connect two soldering points as shown in the diagram above. The replacement wire did not have a retainer like the original wire so I used some hot-melt glue to secure it.

Driver 2

This is the other driver with just two wires.

This is the other cup with two wires.

Original Wire Retention

The original wire had a retention system like this.

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