Headphone Helmet

Introduction

So I cut up my headphones, plugged in my soldering iron, found some old junk male and female earphone connectors and got to work.

Step by step

Here's the spread. That's the helmet in the background, the headphone innards (speakers) are just below, and below those are the earmuffs that snap into the helmet. They are an easily customisable design: some well placed slits allow the hollow interior to be used to run wires from ear to ear. That double male cable is what I'll use to connect my helmet to my music player. I have my $5 multimetre on hand to make sure I get the left speaker on my left ear and the right on my right.

First I made some incisions so I could run the wires inside the earmuffs (hereafter referred to as the "muff assembly").

What I've done here is insert each speaker into each muff, and run each cable to the centre of the muff assembly.

It's hard to see in the above shot but I've tinned the wires to make them easier to solder onto the female headphone jack.

I found a female headphone jack in this old JVC minidisc controller. I think I found it on the street in Geneva. Good old Genevan junk. I preferred this one because the profile is quite flat and when it's sewn into the muff assembly it will not be a noticable bulge.

Solder the speaker wires onto the female jack. Make sure you test with the multimetre first to make sure left is left and right is right. I think actually I may have turned on the music and touched the wires to the solder points to verify this.

In the above photo I've hand-stitched ever so painstakingly the female connector onto a small strip of webbing from some old pants. There were tiny holes in the PCB which allowed me to pass a needle and thread through. This will allow me to sew the webbing into the muff assembly in order to secure it better. I did this because I didn't have any glue but it turned out to be a better option anyway.

Now to the sewing machine. Here I selected a wide zigzag stitch with a very short advance so the stitches are very close together. Kind of like when you get something embroidered with stitch. I sewed as close to the female connector as I could get.

This is what it looks like after fixing the female connector in place at the middle-rear of the muff assembly.

With that, I am ready for the test. Sounds pretty good. I made sure I positioned the speakers as close to my ears as possible.

Here is the rear view. The headphone jack is of the low profile variety. Initially I had a vertical one in there, which stuck out a bit more and I found that while snowboarding it would get in the way as I was turning my head. This should be much better.

Remarks and considerations

The first version worked quite well until halfway through my first day the left speaker cut out. It turns out the solder point broke off of the female connector and I was left with one ear's worth of music, which was annoying. In the second version, I made sure the solder point was stronger and also epoxied the wires in place so wiggling them wouldn't weaken the joint.

It was good that I chose to sew rather than glue the female connector in place because this made it easier to fix. I just took out the stitches, opened up the muff assembly and resoldered/glued the wires onto the female connector.

This was not a challenging project. If you can solder and sew a bit and have some junk earphones lying around that's all you really need.

Gallery

It's Jen. I think she was watching Graise Anatomy. I spelled it wrong intentionally.

This is David. I think he's rocking out to some tunes provided by Jen.

Copyright (C) Donn Morrison 2007