AKG 240 Studio Headphone Repair

Last night I discovered the left side of my AKG 240 Studio headphones was flakey. With a bit of searching, I found this was a pretty common failure for this model. After reading and looking at a few tutorials on the web, I decided to go for the repair. The failure point was obvious once I got them open, a flakey connection that became fully open once I exposed it. Follow along as I document my 15 minute journey to repair them.

IMG_5880
Just getting started, need to peel back the gold cover “emblem” by prying off with my fingernail.
IMG_5883
Once that was off, the two Phillips head screws were exposed.
IMG_5886
Once the screws were out, I gently pulled off the cover exposing the wires and the red one just popped off completely. I also found a small bit of plastic broken off from the piece over the cross-bars.
IMG_5890
After peeling back the insulation on the wire and tinning it, I soldered it back in place with a generous blob of solder.
IMG_5899
If you notice, I touched the plastic around the edge a bit with the soldering iron, but it’s no problem, they went back together nicely.
IMG_5901
The cause appears to be because of the movement of the two cross-bars that not only provide the mechanical connection from left to right, but also carry the audio signal electrically. If this should happen again, I will probably get out the J-B Weld and epoxy over where the cross-bars connect so they don’t move around so much in there. But for now, all is working once again. Yeah!

One Reply to “AKG 240 Studio Headphone Repair”

  1. Hey Rinaldo,
    thanks a lot for that tutorial, i have a 240 mkii and i knew it had a solder problem for a while, pretty much the same one you described here. I live in Brazil and AKG’s technical support here it’s so expensive that i’ve been pushing back for 6 months or more to take the headphone to repair. And then today i’ve decided to resolve it by myself, did some googling, found your blog, followed the instructions, and bam! It worked great, in 20 minutes i was listening again to the amazing sound this headphone has. Thanks again!