2025-05-17 - Hacky Repair of Sennheiser PC 3 Headphones
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Someone gave me a pair of Sennheiser PC 3 headphones in pretty bad
condition a while ago[0]. The foam on the earpieces was completely
missing, and the plastic on one side had broken as well.

First, I tried to replace the foam. There are, of course, replacement
foam pieces for headphones that can be bought relatively cheaply,
but I wanted to see if I could find something usable around the
house. I eventually found a piece of foam that had been used as
packing material for some device I got[1]. This was a bit on the
thin side, but I decided to give it a go anyways, so I stuck some
thin double-sided tape on the earpieces[2] and then attached a strip
of foam to that[3]. This sort of worked, but it wasn't ideal, so I
removed that again and instead covered the earpieces completely with
foam[4][5]. This foam isn't great for headphones, but it does work
well enough for my purposes.

The other issue was the broken part on one side[6]. The part where
the earpiece is connected to the plastic part going over the head
was broken, so the earpiece always fell out. On the other side,
you can see what that piece is supposed to look like[7]. I first
went for a very hacky fix and just held the broken parts together
with a rubber[8]. The headphones were actually quite usable in
this state[9], but I eventually decided to perform a more permanent
repair. I unscrewed the screw holding the two broken pieces together,
then added some super glue along the edge[10] and glued the two pieces
together[11]. Of course, the plastic part that goes over the head has
to be inserted before putting the pieces together since they cannot be
taken apart again once they are glued. It also is a good idea to move
that part occasionally as the glue is hardening just to make sure that
no glue got inside and is preventing it from moving. One last warning
here is that it is easy to get the cables tangled while the earpiece is
separated from the rest of the headphones since it can be turned around
independently[12]. This should be fixed before attaching the earpiece
again, especially since the earpiece on the glued side can't be taken
off anymore (in this case, the other earpiece could still be taken off,
so I could fix the issue, but if both sides had been glued, I would
have had to break the glue on one side to fix the tangled cables).

There probably aren't many people who would still want to use these
headphones even after the repair, but I find that they work well
enough for my purposes, I don't really need anything better.

UPDATE (2025-09-14): I improved slightly on this repair in [13].


[0] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/headphones.jpg
[1] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/foam_piece.jpg
[2] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/tape.jpg
[3] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/foam1.jpg
[4] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/foam2.jpg
[5] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/foam3.jpg
[6] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/broken_part.jpg
[7] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/other_side.jpg
[8] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/broken_part_fixed.jpg
[9] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/final.jpg
[10] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/broken_part_glue.jpg
[11] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/broken_part_fixed_properly.jpg
[12] gopher://lumidify.org/I/phlog/2025-05-17-sennheiser-headphones/cable_tangled.jpg
[13] gopher://lumidify.org/0/phlog/2025-09-14-more-headphones.txt