[Elecraft] What did I do wrong with my headphones??

[Don Wilhelm]

Tom,

I am going to make an assumption because it was a little ambiguous 
whether you changed the jack or the plug.
I assume you changed the *plug* on the headphone cable.  If you changed 
the jack on the adapter cable, please let me know.

I think you wired it right, but only Heil would be able to answer with 
certainty.  Yes, normally white goes to the tip (left channel) and red 
(Right) goes to the ring.  Getting them backwards will reverse the left 
and right in your headphones.

A 3.5mm (1/8 inch) plug is correct.  Good plugs should work fine, but 
off-brand ones may not be as consistent.

If you cut off the cable right above the encapsulating plastic, you may 
not have cut enough off.  Those cables usually break a bit above where 
they are supported.

The nasty sound is likely the result of an open wire.  Cut a bit more 
off the cable and try again.

73,
Don W3FPR


On 3/10/2013 12:33 PM, tomb18 wrote:
> Hi,
> My Heil Proset K2 jack started acting up and I decided to change it.  I
> carefully cut away the plastic on the 3.5mm plug and could not tell with
> 100% certainty that  I got the wiring correct.  However, as far as I could
> tell, there are two shielded cables one with white wire and one with a red
> wire.  The two shielded wires were connected together, and the white went to
> the tip and the red to the other channel.
> When I first plugged it in, it didn't go all the way into the phone jack
> adapter so it seems that a 3.5mm stereo jack is not the right one? Also, it
> seems that the afx no longer worked?
> What was really weird, is that about the same time, I started hearing a low
> level background noise, some kind of RFI.  Well, it was completely frequency
> independent appearing on all bands, and sounded like a prop based airplane.
> So I started looking for the source of the rfi and then it stopped.  It then
> came back and now I realize if I juggle the jack around a bit, it disappears
> and now the audio is normal.
> So, a long story, but what's up with the 3.5mm that it doesn't fit in the
> phone plug adapter?  Is it something different than a 3.5?  Why do
> manufactures like heil use such cheap connectors like an mp3 player??They
> always break.
> Thanks, Tom VA2FSQ
>