I did a bit of research and decided I'd make my own Xbox 360 gaming headset. This would involve integrating a microphone with a standard set of headphones. As my initial motivation was a high quality headset for minimal expense, I needed to find some cheap headphones that delivered good sound.
I purchased some Sennheiser HD 202 Closed Back On-ear Stereo Headphones for £22.99 from Amazon. These scored very highly in a What HiFi review, so I ordered a pair.
I can confirm that the sound quality is excellent for both music and gaming. Some of the Amazon reviews have marked them down for a lack of durability. That wasn't too much of a concern for me, because I was planning to disassemble and resolder them anyway - so any future loose wires would be my own fault.
Now that I had my headphones, I needed a microphone.
I decided to disassemble the Xbox 360 headset that came with my Xbox. This had the following advantages:
- I already own them, so they're 'free'.
- The microphone is black and matches the Sennheiser HD 202s nicely.
- The cable has an in-line on/off switch to mute the microphone.
- The cable has an in-line volume control for the 'game chat'.
This also raises an important point in terms of Xbox Live chat. If you were using an official Xbox headset, you would receive the game audio via your TV speakers and the Xbox Live chat via your headset. It is possible to change the Xbox settings so that you receive Xbox Live chat via your TV. However, you then lose the functionality of the in-line volume control for the gamer chat. The only way to change the volume is via the in game menus. This would be a real pain if you needed to fine tune the volume quickly - e.g. if somebody started shouting into their microphone.
I decided to take the wires normally connected to the Xbox Live headset's speaker and solder them directly to my Sennheiser's left speaker. This would provide both gaming audio and chat audio via the left headphone speaker and game audio via the right speaker. Ideally, I would have liked to have game chat via both speakers, but connecting the wires to both speakers would have shorted out the stereo audio on the headphones. Which would have removed the audio positioning in games. Which would have defeated the point of making a gaming headset.
So, the guide starts here:
You will need:
- A set of headphones that you are happy to use for this project.
- An Xbox 360 headset - preferably in a colour that matches your headphones
- A soldering Iron
- Some solder
- Drill
- Drill bits
- Screwdriver
- 4.8mm Heat Shrink Tubing
Step 1
I began by disassembling my Sennheiser headphones. I removed the left speaker from the headband and then prised off the foam padding. On this model of headphone, the padding is kept in place by two small clips, so I managed to remove the padding without damaging the headphones.
Step 2
Next, I had to remove four screws. This allowed me to remove the actual speaker from the plastic housing.
The disassembled speaker:
Step 3
I now moved onto the Xbox 360 headset. I began by removing the foam speaker cover. This revealed three plastic clips that hold the headset together. These can be unclipped using a small screwdriver:
Step 4
Once unclipped, we gain access to the internals. There is a screw that holds the arm in place. I removed the screw and removed the arm. There are two wires within the arm that connect to the microphone (white and bare metal in my headset). You will need to cut these wires to fully remove the arm from the headset.
Step 5
Now we have our microphone ready to attach to the Sennheiser headphones. We need to drill a hole in the headphones for the arm to fit into and also a smaller hole for the wire to thread through. I went to Poundland and bought a set of wood drill bits:
I used the drill labelled '3' to drill the hole for the microphone arm. This wasn't big enough, so I used the drill labelled '4' to enlarge it. It was still a bit tight, so I enlarged it using a pair of scissors to scrape the sides of the hole.
The hole for the wire is much smaller, so I used '3' to start the hole and stopped drilling as soon as a hole appeared.
Please note that I almost messed things up when drilling the larger hole. It almost infringed on the plastic rim on the inside of the headphones. You may want to position the microphone arm slightly closer to the edge of the headphone.
Step 6
I then pushed the microphone arm into the large hole and threaded the microphone wire through the smaller hole. The microphone arm can now be kept in place with the screw and plastic washer we removed from the original Xbox 360 headset in Step 4.
The attached microphone arm:
(to be completed once I receive the heatshrink wrap from ebay)
