Hardware

sorry the little wire colors are green, red and gold

Hi,

If your earphones are the little button type, then I suspect that the wires are not separately sheathed in plastic, but are multistranded enamel insulated wire.

Two things that come to mind are that you have managed to "cross" a different color strand into another color, or that you haven't removed the enamel from the wire and it is insulated.

To remove this insulation use solder with rosin core and touch to the end then leave the soldering iron on the wire, the heat will eventually burn the enamel off, leaving a cleanlt tinned end.

I don't know which color is what, but if you simply connect like color to like color, then all should be OK.

Take a AA battery. Strip back the wires and take two of them.

Touch them to the battery terminals while you are wearing the earphones. Hold one fast and drag the other back and forth across the other battery terminal.

When you if you hear nothing in either earphone change one wire. When you hear scratching in the earbuds those two wires are for that ear.

Write the colors down.

Change wires till you hear the other ear.

You will note that one color is is common to both. That is the ground.

And no a 1.5v battery will not hurt the ear buds.

Now looking at a new 1/8" Phone plug. The longest blade is the ground.

Lee

Put the earphones on. Use a watch battery or perhaps even a CR2035 BIOS battery. Touch any two of the three wires onto the battery quickly and see which earphone (left or right) makes a click.

If the left one clicks, you have identified LEFT and COMMON. If the right one clicks, you have identified RIGHT and COMMON. If both click, you have identified LEFT and RIGHT. By a process of elimination you can then identify all wires correctly.

For example, if the first pair you try give you a click in the left ear, swap one wire for the third one. If the click moves to the right then the wire you DIDN'T swap is COMMON. If the click moves to both ears, the wire you DIDN'T swap is LEFT. Simple :-)

And since no one has mentioned if you can actually solder the wires together do not forget to place heat-shrink on each wire and over the entire joint before you even begin to attempt to solder the wires.

A lot of those button earphones use a conducting fibre that can not be soldered as it melts way below the temp of a soldering iron and they are very hard to join once the conductor has been cut.

Col