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Earbud wiring w/ mic

qb748

New Member
I have a cheap set of headphones that I want to fix.

Left earbud is dead.

I found an earbud thread that is closed where guy had a similar situation, but slightly different wires.

My right earbud cable (which has the tactile-button mic component) has 4 wires.
Blue-enameled wire, red-enameled, copper wire, copper wire with red stripes.

The left earbud is 2 wires: green wire and copper. I assume copper is ground and green is my +V.

The mic/button housing appears to require fracturing to access insides. I dont want to break it open… yet. Obviously everything I need to know would be explained there Im assuming.

I liked the one guy’s tip about using 1.5V battery to test speaker functionality. Gonna try, and imagine it would help me solve mystery perhaps too.

Thank you forum og’s and mortals.😄
 
The following is from ElectoDoc Pro – an Android app well worth the 5 bucks (or so) it costs.

Screenshot_20250712_002627_Electrodoc Pro.jpg
 
Touch each pair combination in the right side cable with a multimeter set on Ohms - you will hear a definite "click" when you touch the earpiece wires.

The other two will 99% be the mic. The button generally just shorts out the mic, so the same two wires - the device it's plugged in to detects the button by monitoring the voltage across the mic, which has a voltage feed through a resistor in the device.

edit - The mic and earpiece grounds are separate in properly designed stuff, so any voltage drop on the earpiece ground is not added in to the mic audio.
 

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