My current main headphones are a model that doesn't come with a removable cable by default, that I purchased through a company that offers a service to add one aftermarket for you. They offered multiple different connector options, and I chose this one:
This is one of two connector types that come up when you search for "4-pin mini XLR". I opted for this connector on the basis that it would allow me to potentially use the headphones with a balanced output in the future, because I had been researching headphones for probably several days and eventually you start to think that kind of thing is important.
This worked fine for me for quite a while, up until recently, when the included cable that adapts this to a standard 3.5mm TRS headphone jack connector stopped working. When I tried to find a replacement, I quickly learned that this connector is only meaningfully present on headphones that are so expensive that anyone who can afford them can be expected to be able to shell out upwards of 100 of God's own United States Dollars for a top-of-the-line snake-oil-lubricated replacement cable.
So universally is this the case that there is seemingly essentially no market for cheap cables of this type — the only sanely priced one I could find was a mono instrument cable with a proprietary pinout designed for use with some Shure product. The cheapest compatible replacement cable I could find was made by the aforementioned modding company and was listed at a cool $140 CAD, well in excess of half of what my headphones themselves are worth. It should go without saying that there is no audio cable on this planet for which I would pay that kind of money, which brings me to where I'm going with this.
Instead of shelling out Intel Core i3-13100F money for what functionally amounts to 3 meters of wire and a couple of audio jacks, I lopped the connectors off of the old, broken cable and soldered on some new wires and saved myself $140.
<imgsrc="homebrewxlrcablefinished.jpg"alt="A 3.5mm jack to 4-pin mini XLR adapter cable with a shiny black braided exterior">
<figcaption>This braided sheathing can be had for cheap on Amazon by searching "braided cable sleeve". I used the 6mm variant here, and it comfortably fits the three 24AWG wires.</figcaption>
This isn't the only time I've had to do this, either — I, through a bizarre series of events, happen to own a piece of musical equipment made in the 1960s, in the Netherlands, with weird output jacks to match:
These are 2-pin DIN connectors, from the same family as the 5-pin DIN connectors you may be familiar with from their use in MIDI ports. My device uses a pair of these for stereo output. I can only assume this was standard at the time, in the Netherlands, but where and when I live this type of connector is all but unheard of, to the point that there are *no* cables with it available whatsoever, only the bare connectors.
In order to get this thing connected to my other equipment, I had to fashion my own adapter cable out of a stereo-to-dual-mono TRS splitter cable and two of those connectors purchased standalone from the internet.
I'm not going to attempt to teach you how to do this here — there's plenty of people on Youtube who are much more qualified to do that than me — but I think if you're at all comfortable messing with electronics this is a good skill to have. It's proven surprisingly useful to me, not just as a hobbyist who builds weird electronic gizmos for fun but as a casual enjoyer and maker of music.
If this ever happens to you, consider saving the money on some bullshit expensive cable and spending it on some [soldering gear](https://pine64.com/product-category/pinecil/) instead. It's easier than you probably think it is and it can save you, like, a lot of money.
