If you hate the quality of Apple's included iPhone headset but love the functionality of the remote, here's a quick hack to combine the remote with a better headset for quality sound on the cheap.
Headphone hacker Yutaka Tsutano shows us what is a somewhat complicated hack, but nonetheless do-able. While you can potentially destroy two pairs of headphones, you're really just combining wires and you can recover from an error in the process. Here's how you do it:
- Snip both headsets where you want to combine them, being sure to leave as much extra wiring as you can. You can always cut things shorter but you can't get that wire back once it's gone. Better to have more so you have more room for error.
- Strip the coating off the wires. You'll have one wire for the left earbud and one wire for the right earbud. With some earbuds it'll be obvious which is which because the wires will be colored differently or marked. If this is not the case with yours, you'll want to mark the wires yourself so you connect them correctly.
- Connect the left earbud/channel wire from the iPhone headset to the left earbud/channel wire on your high quality earbuds.
- Wrap some electric tape around the splice and give it a listen. If you did everything right, you should now have a new hybrid headset!
UPDATE: Yukata has commented with additional details, warning that this process isn't as straightforward or easy as I've stated. Be sure to read the comment before jumping in so you know what to expect.