Reuse Your Shure Foam Sleeves for Your In-Ear Headphones

These are Shure E3 headphones with the rubber tips on them. I find the rubber tips uncomfortable so I remove them and use the replacement foam sleeves instead.

I have a set of Shure E3 sound isolating earphones. They're some of the best earphones I've ever had. I love them. This type of headphone was originally intended for musicians to use on stage, because they're small, so they're hard to see when on stage, and they do a fantastic job of isolating you from the sounds of the audience and stage volume so that you can just hear what you want, which would be your monitor mix.

Anymore, these types of headphones aren't only popular with musicians. Average consumers who wants a high end, high quality set of sound isolating headphones for use with things such as iPods, are finding these headphones more readily available for general use.

The sound is mostly isolated by use of the earphone tips, they go inside of your ear cavity, further than the average earbud. There are several different styles of tip. My personal favorite is the foam ear tip. Unfortunately, the foam gets dirty and starts to break down a bit, so you only get about a months worth of use of the foam sleeves before you have to replace the tips.

I accidentally left an old set of foam sleeves from my Shure E3s in my pocket when I washed my pants. When the pants came out of the wash, I had what appeared to be a brand new set of foam sleeves!

Shure won't tell you this, but you can wash these foam sleeves and reuse them several times, and they'll come out looking like this again.

I have no doubt that Shure, Westone, Ultimate Ears, and other companies make more money selling replacement foam sleeves for their in ear headphones than they make selling the actual headphones. A quick Google search found that replacement foam sleeves for Shure E1, E2, E2c, E3, and E3c compatible headphones cost on average of $15 for ten foam sleeves. These are just pieces of foam and they're charging more than $1 per sleeve!

This always frustrated me a little. However, I loved the comfort and sound isolation so much that I continued to buy them. However, an accident help me realize that there is another way!

I accidentally left an old set of foam sleeves from my Shure E3's in my pocket when I washed my pants. When the pants came out of the wash, I had what appeared to be a brand new set of foam sleeves! So I saved them and reused them. Then as I used my foam sleeves, instead of throwing them away, I saved them up, until I was out.

How to Make Your Foam Sleeves Like New

Place the old dirty foam sleeves in a clean sock.
Tie a knot at the top of the sock so that the foam sleeves can't escape.
Wash in your washing machine on cold, with regular detergent.
Upon removal of the wet sock from the washer, untie the knot and remove the foam sleeves. They look like new now don't they?
Leave the foam sleeves out to dry for about 24 hours.

It's that simple. So far, I've washed each set of foam tips three times and they still come out like new. I know eventually the foam is going to break down and I'll have to buy replacements.

In my opinion if you're not reusing the foam sleeves for your in-ear headphones, you're just throwing money away!

	Sennheiser CX300-B Earbuds (Black) Price: Too low to display List Price: $49.95
	JBuds J3 Micro Atomic In-Ear Earphones with Travel Case (Jet Black) [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging] Price: $29.95 List Price: $79.95
	JBuds Hi-Fi Noise-Reducing Ear Buds (Black) Price: $9.94 List Price: $49.95
	JBuds J2 Premium Hi-FI Noise Isolating Earbuds (Onyx Black) Price: $13.98 List Price: $79.95

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David says:
11 months ago

Thank you!! Not only are the foam sleeves expensive they think we are stupid enough to pay $9.00 -$10.00 to ship 3 pair of them. Come on...they cannot weigh more than an envelope with a card inside using one postage stamp.

Mike says:
11 months ago

thanks Matt!

vic says:
10 months ago

Good idea Mathen !

It just too expensive.. like you said, each foam is worth more than a buck ..doesnt make sense..

Yoyobuae says:
6 months ago

I have recently bought SE110 headphones. They're great, specially with those phoam sleeves (the new black ones). But I quickly run into problems with cleaning them.

My ears tend to get them real dirty, real quick. Using them for too long without cleaning turned out to be bad for my ears (swelling, pain, probably infection), I had to stop using the foam sleeves for a week (waiting for swelling to go away).

So I after that started cleaning them more often. But then they completely lost their memory foam (that what they're made of, it think) properties. It was frustrating. The moment they get wet they absorb the water like crazy and their properties deteriorate. After drying they regain some of it, but eventually they'll just die, like the small foam sleeves did, they're sponges now.

So, I'm now using the medium set of sleeves (luckily, 3 pairs of foam sleeves came with headphones) and I ain't gonna get them wet ever again.

What I'm doing for cleaning is using a toothbrush (not the one I use for toothbrushing though) and cleaning them at nights after using them. They go back to being somewhat shiny after a good brushing, which is a good sign. After a few days of use it seems to be working. I'll report my results after a few weeks of use.