All right, so I figure someone out there will help me out.  I bought a solid pair of earphones from radioshack a while back and then the jack on the end cracked and i couldnt use them anymore.  so i went to radioshack yesterday and bough 1/8 inch stereo phone plug to replace the end that is messed up.  Here is where i encountered the problem.  I striped the wires of the outside black insulation and found a total of 4 wires.  Grouped together on one side is a white insulated wire and with it wrapped around is a copper non-insulated wire (i am assuming this is a ground wire) and on the other there is a red wire and copper non-insulated wire wrapped around the red one.  There are three prongs on the new earphone plug one i am guess a ground, the other two for the red and white wires.  But when i connected them and finally get the wires connected in a fashion to where i get some sound i get it in mono. When i switch the fader to the left side it gets really quiet and the right side it stays the same as it was as if it was in the center.  lil help?  I know there has to be some people with the smarts out there, unfortunately i have gone through 2 plugs already trying to figure it out and still nothing.  thanks for reading through all of this and thanks for the help.

How did you connect them?

The two grounds (uninsulated) should be connected to the single ground on the plug, then the insulated wires to each of the others. There is a nice drawing here of wiring a headphone jack. (Scroll down half way).

Red on shorter stalk, white on longer.  spun the two grounds together and connected them to the ground (longest lead).  the solder wont stay on either?  the packaging said they are solder ready?  what the h?

You are using an electronics iron and flux core solder, right?

Soldering hints in case you need them:
If the wire is braided (or in this case the two ground wires, I usually tin it first by twisting the strands, then apply solder. Let that cool, then wrap it around the connector. Touch the iron to the place where the wire and connector meet so that they both heat. Then apply the solder to the connection, not the iron, so it melts when the wire and connector are hot. Solder won't stick to cold metal (but strangely, sticks well to (relatively) cold skin ). A vice or locking pilers help to keep everything still to allow you to concentrate on the iron and solder. If it's taking too long, to get everything right, back off and let things cool down; not as important here, but you still don't want to melt the plug.

From that diagram, it looks like the tip is left, middle is right and the rest is ground. I don't know how that applies to your connector tabs.

A meter really helps here to make sure everything is in the right place and the solder connections are good.

As a final option, grab an old (or cheap) pair of headphones and snip the plug and 3-5 inches of wire off, then do a wire to wire solder connection and apply electrical tape or shrink tubing.