Advice About V-Moda Headphones

[Royel91]

I recently bought another pair of V-Moda Vibes. I gave away the older, broken one for a friend to solder.

Now that I have a new set of ear buds, I have a couple of questions to ask.

1. Where can I buy myself some heat shrink tubing? Would Home Depot have any (I live in New York City).
2. If I am able to obtain heat shrinkable tubes, how do I apply them to the jack so that I never have to face that broken jack mess again? Any link or help would be appreciated. (I tried googling instructions, but couldn't find it).
3. How do you clean the V-Moda Vibes? My ear gets a little moist after long periods of time listening to them and I feel that the ear buds are also a little moist. I am fearful that it may get dirty after a while. (Ew, nasty! ) With my old Vibes, I usually swabbed them with the tiny q-tips, but it felt ineffective in cleaning it.
4. If you have any, do you recommend any tips on keeping the Vibes clean and tidy? I don't really want to spend another $100 on a pair of Vibes every 2-3 months.

Thanks for your time in advance.

[dfkt]

Heatshrink tubing should be available in any electronics store. You cut off a piece, slip it over the plug and use a hairdryer or a cigarette lighter to shrink it.

I never cleaned my Vibes, and I've been using them while sleeping, for 8 hours straight. No harm done to the phones. I just wipe them with some tissue to get off the grime.

Here's a thread where you see how the heatshrink looks like: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=10548

BTW - didn't you get a new Vibe in return? The newer ones have some strain relief built into the plug.

[Royel91]

Yes, I did get a new one.

The new one sports a black pouch (instead of gold) and there is some strain relief, but still, it doesn't look very strong and I'm worried that the plug will still snap off the wire.

After my old one broke, I don't want to take any chances.

Thanks!

[Nujabez]

I bought a pair of V-moda vibes and when I left it to burn in for 12 hours the right side of my v-moda vibes has much lesser volume than my left side anyone know if i can fix this or can I use my warranty?

[dfkt]

Did you use too high volume when burning them in? That might damage any phone. Did they sound balanced right out of the box, or was the right channel like that from the beginning?

If not, first thing to check is if something is stuck in the little vent hole on the inside of the phone. Blow in it, or blow in the larger sound hole (covered with the mesh) - this might fix any stuff being stuck in the air path.

Otherwise you received a dud, send it back and get a new one.

[paulenheimer]

This may be a little off topic, but I was also suffering from having one ear bud being almost 100% muted for no apparent reason. I got the vibes as a replacement for the stock ipod headphones, because I use my ipod when I workout which is about 10 hours a week. During a really hot day I went running with them, and after a few miles I was sweating so much the headphones kept falling out. After a few times of putting them in, the right one fell off and when I put it back in I couldn't hear anything through it. I turned off the ipod and let the headphones sit for about a week to let any sweat that may've gotten into the driver to dry, but it didnt do anything. Just recently I gave a go at fixing them. I took off the silicon deal, and with a bent staple started scraping any wax that was on the mesh driver grill. By accident I removed the grill, and it was like taking off a drain cover of clogged drain because on the non-visible side of the grill was a serious buildup of ear wax. Just to make sure I listened to the phones without the grill, and they were as good as new. I tried just scraping off the wax, but it was too embedded in to the small holes, so I soaked the little piece in some hot water and you could just see the wax and whatever else dissolve almost immediately (kinda gross).

So, to whoever posted two above this one a while back, if you have waxy ears like I do, you could try removing the grill and scraping/soaking it.

[Royel91]

Thanks for the tip Paul!
I didn't realize you could pop open the grill. I popped it open, and it was clean (to my surprise ).

The grill, around the edges has some kind of sticky, but dry adhesive though. It feels like glue, and I'm 85% sure that it is not my ear wax.

Thanks for the tips. I <3 my Vibes, even though I'm still paranoid about the wire breaking even with the shrink tubing on.

[paulenheimer]

I ended up actually losing the mesh coating, but having a meshless earbud that works is better than having meshed earbuds that don't work at all.

Plus, any glue that could have been holding on the mesh had long been gone...probably dissolved from all the sweat. I wasn't even trying to get the screen off, it just kind of fell off when I was scraping the grossness off the top