How to prevent headphone connectors from oxidizing?

A

athrun200

New member
I live in Hong Kong where the humidity is around 80-90% most of the time.
I believe that the connector of my Sennheiser HD 202 II has oxidized a little bit since whenever I plug it in my audio interface, it has only sound from the right.
I have to spin the connector several times in order to get the sound from the left.

Are there any tips to prevent the connectors from oxidizing?
What can I do if it is oxidized? Should I use sand paper to remove the oxide layer?
 
It's not a problem I've ever had to face but you can get electrical contact cleaner for that kind of thing.
A spray tin of deoxit and a soft rag should do the job, but I wouldn't be hitting it with sandpaper.

It does no harm to coat a connector and work it into the socket a good bit too. That can help to clean the internal connectors.
It's good practice to do that once in while to all the sockets on your patchbays/mixers.
 
Most connectors that I've seen for headphones are gold plated. Gold is very resistant to oxidization, so I'd really doubt that's your problem. More likely is the jack that the headphones plug into is getting oxidized. Like Steen said, put some deoxit on your plug, plug/unplug it a few times, and it should clean the jack pretty well.

Otherwise it could be that the jack has a loose connection. If cleaning doesn't fix it, it might be time to either have it repaired or repair it yourself.
 
From my experience with headphones. These sound more like symptoms of the copper wire inside the insulation cracking or not making a proper connection somewhere inside. I had a work around for this back in my youth that utilized an exacto kinfe and some electrical tape. not sure you want to take that plunge or not.
 
Tadpui said:
Most connectors that I've seen for headphones are gold plated. Gold is very resistant to oxidization, so I'd really doubt that's your problem. More likely is the jack that the headphones plug into is getting oxidized.
Click to expand...

Forgive my ignorance, what is the difference between connector and jack? I thought they are the same.

I am going to buy a electrical contact cleaner to give a try.
 
Try the headphones plugged into something else. Still do it? Plug something else into your interface. Still do it?

Always try to confirm/narrow-down the source of the problem via simple process of elimination.
 
athrun200 said:
Forgive my ignorance, what is the difference between connector and jack? I thought they are the same.

I am going to buy a electrical contact cleaner to give a try.
Click to expand...

The connector would be the plug (male) and the jack would be the input (female)
 
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