Jan 30, 2010
Fix it: Xbox 360 Headset
Photo of Wednesday, the black cat, is © Lauren Riddle.
Our black cat, Wednesday, has a cat tree, a feather boa, and all the mice a cat could ever ask for, but her favorite toy to destroy turns out to be cables. Yes, cables. She will chew through headphones, Wii sensor bars, and my Xbox 360 headset. If your cat, or another wild animal you choose to keep in your home, decides to destroy your headset, this “fix-it” tutorial will help you repair the damage.
Scenario
The cables on your Xbox 360 headset have been damaged or severed. You don’t want to spend $20 to replace it and are brave and confident that you can fix it yourself.
What you will need
These are household items familiar to anyone who has ever taken apart and fixed any electronics. If this is your first attempt, don’t worry, you can easily learn how to use them.
- A soldering iron
- A spool of thin solder
- A wire stripper
- Some instant glue
If you are missing a particular item, you can easily purchase it cheaply from most electronics stores. I have included links to these items in the SparkFun store. They’re both cheap and great for beginners! Plus, you’ll get to reuse them on your future electronics projects.
Before we get started
If this is your first time soldering, I recommend reading the SparkFun tutorial, including its safety tips! This tutorial will describe how to fix the cable below the volume control; however, fixing the cable above the volume control is almost exactly the same.
Step 1
If the cable hasn’t been completely severed, then you’ll need to make a cut. Your wire stripper can dual as a wire cutter, so use it to cut the cable right below the damaged area. You should have two pieces: the cable with the plug at one end, and the rest of the headset.
If your headset was damaged above the volume control unit, you’ll want to cut the cable right above the damage. Make sure to cut as close to the damage, since we want to maximize the amount of cable that is left.
Step 2
Use your fingers or the wire stripper to pry open the casing. Your best bet is to do it on either side of the volume wheel. Unfortunately, you’ll break some of the casing in the process, but you can glue it back together later.
You might ask yourself at this point, “Why go through the trouble to break open the case instead of directly soldering the cut cable back together?” It turns out it is infinitely easier to solder the cable onto the circuit board inside the volume control instead of onto another cable. The wires that make up the cable are tiny.
Step 3
Remove the exposed circuit board from the casing and flip it over. You need to desolder the damaged cable from the circuit board by heating up each solder pad and lightly pulling on the cable. If you’re working on the cable below the volume control, then there are only three pads to heat up, labeled “SP+”, “M+”, and “G”. If you’re working on the other cable, then there are four pads labeled “SP-”, “SP+”, “M+”, and “M-”.
Step 4
Now that the damaged portion of the cable is removed, strip the end of the good cable using the wire stripper. If it is the cable with the plug at the end, then you’ll see a blue and a copper wire exposed; otherwise, you’ll see a blue, a green, and a copper wire. The white wire you saw before is hidden by the copper wire.
Separate the white wire from the copper wire. You’ll unthread the copper wire in the process, so rethread it by turning it clockwise a few times with your fingers.
Step 5
Next, you need to repeat step 3 in reverse. The easiest way to do this is to first heat up each empty solder pad with the soldering iron and add a little bit of extra solder. Then for each wire, heat up its respective solder pad, stick the end into the blob of solder, remove the soldering iron, and let it cool off.
Remember, if you’re fixing the cable below the volume control (right side of the photo in step 3), attach the blue wire to “SP+”, the white wire to “M+”, and the copper wire to “G”. Otherwise, on the left side, attach the blue wire to “SP+”, the green wire to “SP-”, the white wire to “M+”, and the copper wire to “M-”.
Test it
Before closing up the circuit board, make sure the headset works with your Xbox 360. It should work if everything is connected properly. If it doesn’t, recheck that each wire is on the correct solder pad and that the wire makes a clean connection with the pad. Also, some of these pads are close together, so make sure that there is no solder connecting any two pads together.
Close it
If the headset passed the test, then put the circuit board back into bottom half of the casing. I recommend sticking a piece of double sided foam tape to the back of the circuit board before placing it in the casing. It helps keep the wires from moving and touching anything else on the board during use later. Next, apply some instant glue to the four broken pegs on the other half of the casing (shown in the photo).
Press the two halves together for a good 30 seconds.
Finale
If you’ve successfully followed this series of steps, you should now be the proud owner of a working, albeit shorter, Xbox 360 headset!
Our cat did the same thing to my husband’s (wired) Xbox controller, except the damage is pretty far from the volume control. He says if we use your instructions, his controller will have to be held almost at chin level! Any ideas on what to do? He tried cutting near the damage and splicing the cord back together, but that didn’t work for some reason. Any input you have would be most helpful. Things are very tight, financially, and we can’t afford to replace the controller. Thanks so much, Jean-Pierre.
BTW, I was born in Frankfurt and visited again when I was 11.
I didn’t have any luck splicing the cable back together the first time either, but here is an idea:
This triangular protoboard or rectangular protoboard from SparkFun could be used. It is small, and could be placed between the two ends of the cable where he cut. Much like in steps 4+5, the wires of the same color could be soldered together in one of the holes (e.g., white with white in one hole, blue with blue in another, and so on.). Then, insulate it all with some electrical tape. It won’t be pretty, but he wouldn’t have to hold the controller under his chin!
Unfortunately, shipping just that 50 cent part would be inconvenient, but any scrap piece of electronics where he could solder the wires together individually would work.
hey i wanna splice a black head set to a white one but the black head set has an extra cord so i’m pretty confused can i splice them together?
I don’t have a black head set at my disposal, but if you were to take some photos of your headset I might be able to help you out. Just post them somewhere, like ImageShack and reply here with a link, then I’ll take a look.
I have one of the older model 360 headsets, with the volume control and mic on/off on the part that plugs directly into the controller. Kitten gnawed through it like a hot knife through butter. Can I use these same instructions on that model?
We just got this kitten… and I think it would be great for me to learn to do this.
Unfortunately I don’t have one of the older headsets to take apart; however, I would expect it to be similar to the left side of my remote (see Step 3). If the kitten chewed through the cable close to the connector, I would recommend taking that apart and soldering right there.
I initially tried just soldering two ends of the cable together (wire by wire), but they’re difficult to solder together, which is why I opted to shorten the cable and solder directly onto the solder pads on the remote.
Thanks for the reply, I have not yet attempted this repair, since I got a second headset (newer style like shown in photos above) when I picked up a 60GB Live Starter kit a few months ago.
When I get around to this repair, will let you know how it turns out.
my cat bit my xbox headset cord by the long piece in the middel and i need help what does it have to do with the inside
My rationale for soldering the cord on the inside of the remote was that a) the cord was chewed through close the remote, and b) the wires in the coat are insulated and small, which makes it difficult to just solder them together. My recommendation is to find some scrapped PCBs with surface mount pads and solder each pair of wires with the same color onto one pad. Then cut off the excess PCB so that it becomes small enough to wrap in some electrical tape. If you use a scrap piece of PCB, make sure that the pads aren't connected by a trace, so that you avoid creating a short between any of the wires.