Monday, February 18, 2013

Of all the things to break...

...I lose my microphone. As you may know I play a lot of online games, and that means you're usually in teamspeak, mumble, or ventrillo talking to someone. To help coordinate or plan strategies on how to move fleets in eve, watch for neuts, or what objective to attack in BF3. So I was more than disappointed when my mic decided it didn't want to work anymore. I also have done an online podcast for a different project, which I'm not involved in doing anymore, but my start backup soon.

I have the USB version of this headset.



It's Creative Labs Fatal1ty Gaming Headset. It's a great headset and sound wise it still works really well. It has a detachable microphone so I can remove that and use them like regular earphones. The microphone piece itself actually works well, the issue is some of the wiring inside the headset. The cord has a tendency to coil up and I've been trying to leave it straightened out over night so that it will stop doing that. I think this must be an issue with wired headsets because I had a different pair of headsets do the same thing to me a few years ago.

So being the tinkerer I am I opened it up to take a look at it.

I'm not sure exactly what wires are causing the issue because it will cut in and out. So I'm thinking I might have to re-solder the connections to get it to work. Someone on reddit suggested I check it for continuity but the wires are pretty small so I'm thinking I will have some problems with that.

Anyway, I know this is a bit of a ramble but if anyone is reading this and has had to fix the mic in one of these please post a comment below with what you did. I'd appreciate the help.