you should figure out how much its going to cost to fix them, before you send them someplace. You will pay postage to find out the same thing, just to get them back broken if it's too high a cost to be worth your time fixing them.

What model/manufacturer and what'd you pay for them. pull a parts diagram and figure out what you need to replace. Even when you actually commit to fixing them, they won't be able to get the parts. they will also carpet-bomb fixing it, and replace assembly parts instead of cheap small stuff.
you may as well pick the most expensive way to do it. and that will be the price.

 

Thank ya! Very helpful.

 

When my daughter was about 6 years old she performed a flawless dive onto the bed that my headphones where on and did horrible things to the output jack of my original Audio Technica ATH-M50 headphones. I took them to the electronics store in our village for repair and the guy fucked them up big time by chopping away the curly cable to almost half the size that it started out as and also putting the cheapest shit output jack on that could possibly be. Furrowing my brows upon seeing them I said that this was unacceptable and then plugged them into my phone to see what they sounded like...which was muffled, the soundstage narrow and flat and nothing at all like they had always sounded before. He told me that I knew nothing about headphones and how they should sound which ruffled my feathers enough to begin a near aria and loud enough for the customers in the room to hear of my pro audio experience, the fact that this pair of cans were my reference phones and that anybody that should trust him to offer audio electronic advice from him and would be foolish to purchase even a USB cable from this store...which prompted him to immediately offer to replace the headphones at no cost to me. I shook his hand and returned two days later two pick up my new pair.

Buy a new pair if you can.

 

Absolutely, whenever you can. But even after this, I would still attempt some DIY repair. Worst case scenario outcome, is you buy a soldering iron for future use; because the old pair is going into the dumpster burned up wiring or not.

My comments are more towards the activity of actually ordering parts from these manufacturers. AKG in particular. They design them so that the cable becomes damaged/broken, by really reinforcing the headphones side connector. It's meant for the cable replacement to be the cheaper and easier repair/fix. Which is great, if they ever had these in stock. Instead, they allow them to remain on factory backorder, until which time they have enough orders for it to be worthwhile to produce the parts. That can be months. They sell them as an assembly, so making the part is not just simple extrusion of some wiring.

When you used to approve an estimate to do a repair on gear, the company fixing them was happy to get the work. Nowadays, there is someone who just got Snake Eyes rolled up onto their Waiting on Parts report; where your shit will sit on a shelf for the next number of months waiting for a 20$ cable from a factory in Pakistan.

A good trick for this whole thing uses a little Spy tradecraft. Put a loop in the cable at the 1/4" end and tie it up with a string or a rubber band. So when you turn your head too quickly and yank on the cable; it will just pull apart the loop instead of breaking a part which is engineered to fail on purpose.

 

Last edited: Nov 4, 2022

For people who are less inclinded to custom build themselves but still wanna save some pennies, look up a brand on amazon called World's Best Cables. They're a custom cable company. They combine big brand components but the price is marked down cos it's not official branding. E.g. i just bought a 3m guitar cable that has a Mogami 2524 wire and Neutrik connectors for $35AUD (which is $22USD)