Well... the not-so-trusty Arctis 5 headphone are back on the bench. Almost immediately after I repaired the equalizer, I noticed that the sheath around the adjustable boom mic had developed a crack. I think what happened is that over time, the plastic began to harden and could no longer flex as much as the boom mic it protected, and eventually became brittle and cracked. I figured if I left this for too long, the boom mic underneath would eventually get strained and break, so it would be a good idea to replace the plastic sheath.
I'd like to replace the sheath with some heat shrink, but since the sheath extends into the body of the headphone earcup, I will need to disassemble the earcup and separate the boom mic assembly.
The microphone is attached to a spool so that you can store it in the headphone cup so it gets out of the way when you don't need it. Unfortunately, there isn't a nice connector joining it to the PCBA, so I'll need to de-solder these tiny wires. Annoyingly, they are covered in some black glue to reinforce the joints. I removed the black glue using a soldering iron, some flux, and some contact cleaner (isopropyl alcohol).
Once the wires were de-soldered, I had to gently pull the cable through this 'trench' to release the boom mic and spool assembly. This will require some fiddling to re-assemble later, but that's better than just cutting the tiny wires and trying to splice them back together later.
Once the mic and spool were released, I just had to soften up the blob of hot glue holding them together, and then the boom mic was freed. I did this by setting my soldering iron to about 120C, a temperature high enough to melt glue, but not high enough to melt the plastic spool. I guess it was still a bit too hot, the spool looks a bit mangled!
With the boom freed of its housing, I could then remove the plastic sheath, being careful not to damage the metal boom underneath. This boom is very flexible. I considered leaving it bare, but it felt a little too flexible without a supporting plastic sheath. I left a small amount near the mic for the heatshrink tubing to wrap around.
I threaded the delicate boom mic wires back through the headphone earcup by looping them around a piece of copper wire, and pulling them through the little 'trench'.
Then I reassembled everything and tested it with my PC. Everything was electrically sound! However, I noticed that the boom did not retract as smoothly as it used to... I disassembled it and realized that I had not threaded the wire through the spool correctly, and it was getting caught. I needed to de-solder the leads again and redo everything (except of course, applying the heatshrink tubing 🙂)
Now that these headphones have undergone a thorough refurbishing, I hope I won't need to faff about with this anymore!
- ✅ Replaced earcups
- ✅ replaced USB A cable on equalizer
- ✅ replaced plastic sheath on boom mic
- ❓ replace cable between headphones and equalizer??
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