Cordless phone headsets

I don't understand what you exactly mean with 'get static' but let's assume the sound in the earphone(s) and from the microphone is interrupted and there is very likely no defect at all in the capsules (earplugs and mic) and only wires are broken. Under this conditions and especially if the cases and other hardware is still okay and fits your needs as no other headset did so far then I would recommend changing the wires only.

I've done this several times now and always because the supplier used bad stranded wire and/or wrong soldering technique. Wires often break just at the entrance into the cases where the bending radius is smallest and forces hight.

As replacement wires I used those which I kept from old headphones from good brands like SONY or SENNHEISER. They use the best and most expensive cables. For successful repair of such expensive headsets I always try to keep the existing cable and cut it only an inch shorter, if the cable is broken in this section.

Hi Newton2k1,

Yes, the static is from the wires breaking. This I have proved to myself by moving the lead while talking to a friend. Once all the wires in the lead break clear off, then it is proved again by pushing on the lead in different spots and when the ends make contact again she can hear me then or I can hear her again. I don't have any leads that are good around here to replace the bad ones with. I have to open up another one of these sets and see if the leads can be replaced in them. They aren't made to be worked on if I can buy them for $2.99 plus shipping.

I looked up the name Sennheiser and Google came up with Sennheiser SE 335 headsets... for the price of $105.00. Devide that by $2.99 and they would have to last for 35 years...(before hearing the first touch of static from a wire being broken) of the phone being dropped and that stretching the wires, or doing something and turn away quick and the headset wire is caught and pulls a person up short. And talking on the phone (so far this month July 1-22) for Total Minutes: 2,902 (1,517 Outgoing, that's only a couple hours a day on the phone) and this may be a slow month for talking... how many times does a head get moved in that length of time? 10 times a minute? That means just this month the wires have been moved 29,000 times. Working on the wire strands in the lead until they break, one by one, and then rub together, causing the static.

I don't mind paying for quality, but I want my monies worth. If I pay $30 for a headset, then it must last 10 years minimum or I am better off buying a bunch of $3 ones and throwing them in the drawer and throwing the broke wire ones away every year or so.

5 sets x $3 a set = $15. 5 sets x $105 a set = $525. I can't afford that kind of money!

I don't know what "good" wire should cost, or where to get it, but that is all that is needed.

So I keep crying and complaining. :(

I had a Radio Shack headset that lasted for years, I really liked it. Why not buy another one. Oh... OF COURSE... it lasted too long, so they discontinued that model number.

So, I just gave up and ordered 5 from a site where they have 865 of them in stock for $10 each with free shipping. Hahahaha, what a laugh. They are charging $5-7 for the shipping and then actually shipping them for about $1.50 each. I think one of them I got off eBay said it cost $1.40 on the postage tag for them to ship it to me.

My memory isn't what it used to be, I can't remember what/how easy it looked to change the leads on the headset was. Was too long ago I was messing around doing that stuff. Have you had a $3 headset open to see how feasible it is to change out the leads?

Not really worth a persons time to try to repair them I suppose. Like most others, I just need something to bitch about I suppose.

Thanks for your reply, you understood what I was talking about in the original question. You understood there were no batteries or wireless involved!

I need to quit whining, it doesn't matter if they cost $3 or $300, they all last about a year or two.

One way I have used over the years of showing people what I was talking about is:

There are 2 cans of Pepsi sitting on the counter, one has a $1 price tag in front of it and the other has a $10 (or $100 or $1,000, take your pick) price tag in front of it. A person comes up and is all thirsty and asks: What is the difference?

Reply: Nothing.

Their reply: Why does one can cost $1 and the the other costs $10 then?

Reply: Which one do you want?

Their reply: Wellllll, their must be something different with the $10 can.

Reply: Pay $10 and take either can, pay $1 and take either can, I told you they were the same.

But there are many people who will pay the $10...thinking they are getting a greater value...?

Me? I need to be shown there is more value for the money I am spending. Lots don't, they see more money/cost and think? they are getting a better product. Sometimes, sometimes not.

These "cheap" headsets? Do you see anyone advertising: Our headset costs $30, 10 times as much as the other headset that looks "just like ours" that sells for $3. Buy ours, it is guaranteed for 10 times as long.

That does not happen. They are good for a year, just like the ones selling for a tenth of their price. And may have came off the same assembly line (probably did, more than likely, comparing them, they look exactly the same, the different ones that I have bought that have different names on them).

Take a survey, how many have 5 headsets placed around the house near the cordless phones so they can be plugged into whichever one that is being used of the 3 phone numbers I have here at home (the cell is number 4, but it is a Nextel), with 3 separate bases and 11 cordless handsets sitting in chargers or lying around.

Computer here in the office with dual monitors on it, next to it is a notebook with a 17" screen that the Quickbook database is on, in the frontroom another computer, in the bedroom another computer. All on, 24/7. Why? Well, I'm handicapped and don't get around very good, don't want to break a leg (for real) trying to get to the phone or computer!

Hi Guest,

Nevertheless things like headsets are sold from 3$ to 300$ I use the whole span in this price range, because of different expectations.

The 300$-headset which looks quite similar to the Headline thing from one of the pictures I use daily in the office with lots of movements and I even hang-in my cordless phone and use the headset wire like a neck strap. It's now two years old and works still perfect with being used several tens of times per week. It is a Netcom product and tailored to fit my SIEMENS SL1 cordless, which works till 5 years too w/o any problems, except looking badly now.

The resoldering of wires I did for my personal audio equipment. I liked a lot the earphone capsules of my Sony Ericsson K800i and the neck strap technology of one of those 9.99$ electronics discount earphones for MP3 players or so. After one SE-earphone set had broken wires I unsoldered the capsules and replaced those from the neck stap unit. Now I have a combination of excellent sound quality with external noise cancellation and this special neck strap which just fits my needs.

And this was the whole intention of my proposal to you: Keep your beloved unit - whatever it is - and combine it with another part of colletor's item to get an even better unit.

I don't want anyone to repair 3$ parts - except they are collector's items. If at any day my 300$ company phone headset goes bad I will certainly not repair it but buy a new one. But this is just good hardware, good wires, good ear phones and good sound quality (I prefer to have a stereo headset for monaural sound too because especially under low volume or distorted sound quality I can understand much better than with only one ear.)

Coming back to the differently priced cans of coke:

We certainly DO pay more but we also do before an in-depth check of performance. We try to compare different brands and select based on a selection table for the more expensive items.

In the example with the cheap headset I could tell you from feeling how the wire can be bent and acts back what wire quality is used. To train yourself you can go into a Radio Shack and bend all the wires of all the headphones in the exhibition between two or three fingers and thus get a figure of the difference. Compare only a SONY and e.g. any cheap noname wire and you will see that an even much thinker SONY cable is softer than the cheap crap.

For self repair I often use good (!!!) cable from phones or telephone wiring cable. This is also very robust and longlife.

Regarding the absolute pricing you're using now a 3$ item for heavy daily use and thus I would suggest that you really get a much better unit. If you pull-on that new thing in the morning and undo it in the evening and liked it the whole day then you will mentally feel much better than worrying about cheap crap. Do the same as you do with your computers, invest and become happy.

I have used speaker cable to repace bad original wires. It works well.

Hi silvCrow,

I would be interested in a link showing which wire you used. That may be a way for me to go too. Is it stiff wire or the really limber wire?

Motorola #53725 about $12 had for about eight years works great, the plastic cover deteriorated on the ear piece but the foam is comfortable enough. See at www.newegg.com

Hi bwire,

In eight years, how many hundred thousand times do you think the wires have be moved on your headset? (leading to strands being broken in the lead)

When I talk on the phone I am usually doing something else that causes me to move my head (thus moving the leads/wire going to the headset) or moving the phone. I Googled the 53725 and it is about $20 shipped. 5 of those would be $100 instead of $50 and I have no idea if they would last longer than the year these do... with the way they are used and abused here at my place in real life.

If a company would guarantee one for 10 years that I paid 10 times as much for, $30 vs $3 and would keep replacing them until the ten years was up, I would go for it. But that is NOT going to happen. No, what is going to happen is the $3 one and the $30 (or the $100 one as far as I know) are both going to last about a year.

I don't drink pop, but the Pepsi deal pretty well says it for me. If the headsets are both the same quality wise or close to it, then I will take the least expensive one everytime.

I Google a headset part number, (Plantronics, which is a big name in headsets) and check the prices (without shipping), all sealed in the factory packaging: Plantronics $35, site a $19, site b $5.

Life is mostly about the money for people like me I guess, by that I mean; poor enough that price does mean something to me.

Maybe I should splurge and buy one for the $20 shipped and see if lasts more than a year or so... but it is pretty doubtful it would.

Now, if you were to tell me you talk on it several hours a day, everyday, and walk/move around a lot sometimes, and sometimes the phone falls out of your pocket or off the desk and it rips the headset off your head from the weight and after that happening many times over the eight years it still sounds great, then: Ah! I might get interested in buying a 53725!

I like Motorola okay, I pack an i1000plus cell phone and this is its 7th year and still the original battery. I just come home from work and plug it into the charger, the phone is on 24/7/365. Cell phone people say: If you get over 2 years from a battery you are doing really, really well. So, I should write Motorola and complain the battery is lasting too long? LOL, I don't think so!

Check the battery and replace if necessary!

It might need some fine tuning also but I doubt it. It is also possible that you get interference with somebody else. Have you checked that?

Hi Isti80,

No batteries, it's not wireless.

It is just a speaker, a mic, a plastic band to go over the head and two wires running down to a plug that you plug into just about any of the cordless phones made these days and probably into a lot of the cell phones too. (if they use a 2.5mm plug setup)

I only made my suggestion based on the word 'cordless'.

You may have some faulty contact anywhere, however, if you can open the unit simply re-solder the mic terminals with flux and it may help to get rid of your problem or replace it with another mic (that you can find in just about anything these days) else replace the whole lot.

Plantronics are a good manufacturer.

Have you thought about going wireless?

Hi Randall,

Yes I have. I do not want to be wearing a headset all the time around the house, so there would be 4 headsets minimum to buy... @ $200-300 each=$800-1200 per line times 3 lines=$2400-3600.

With the cord one, I just plug it into the phone that is ringing.

BIG jump in price from $3-4/$10x4=$40 shipped and $2400-3600!(which probably wouldn't include shipping)

Cost restricts me to corded/wired headsets. Just part of being poor... and there are a lot of in the world in that situation, so I don't feel bad about it. Maybe in my next life I can be rich. (I hope, I hope)

Due to the nature of electronics these days, smaller and ligher and more efficient generally means shorter life for a number of reasons. It is highly unlikely that you will find a headset(wired or wireless) for home or office use that will last for more that a year and half. The primary problem with most of these units is the rechargable battery. The more you recharge the battery, the more it's life span shortens. The best that you can do is to buy a product that has a replacement battery and in this way you would only incure the cost to replace the battery after a year or two of use.

For home wireless phones, you may want to look the Calisto Pro latest product from Plantronics...www.plantronics.com. It has a wireless headset and a handset. The other product that you may want to consider is also from Plantronics. It is a older unit, the CT12. It is a similar system to what you have describe with a headset that plugs into a display unit that you clip onto you belt. The battery in this unit is replaceable.

Good luck in your search....

You should think about going wireless, that will solve your problem. Plantronics is among the best wireless headsets we have used in our business. They have a long range, that we need, so that we can use them in our warehouse pulling orders and answering phones on the go. They are expensive but, they last for a very long time. We are going on 10 years with some of ours!