Ok, I just finished writing this thing and it all got erased. I'll try to remember everything I put in it.
A few months back, I purchased a pair of Ultrasone HFI-700s. To put it bluntly, they are my favorite headphones ever. I absoulutely love the sound.
However, this isn't a review of the HFI, so I won't write one.
A while after that, I got the Beyer leather pads for my DT990. When they first came, I couldn't decide if I liked the sound on the DT990. After a while,
I decided that I did not, so I took them off. So, I had a pair of uncomfortable HFIs and a pair of very comfy and unused Beyer genuine leather ear pads.
What to do? Put them together, of course! The only problem was that the Beyer pads were not the right size. They are a large circle shape, but the HFI
are a smaller ovular shape. My solution was to make an insert that would fit around the HFI and be big enough to hold the Beyer pads. Here's what I was
aiming for:
If you own an HFI, you know how the pads are held on. There is the standard flexible plastic lip on the pads and a firm plastic lip on the headphone
that the pad lip holds on to. On the DT990, there is one lip, but on the HFI there is a lip and another one behind it that sort of makes a lip sandwich.
Thus, there is a nice little crevice to slide a spacer into.
I had to get some material that would be sturdy, but that I could work with. It also had to be the right thickness to fit in the lip crevice on the HFI.
I went to my bookstore at school and found a good candidate in the arts sections (materials, not books). It's some kind of -board (not card), but I
forget the prefix. Here's a picture of it:
After a few hours an a sliced-open finger, I had my cutouts. They were a perfect fit! Check it out:
Notice how they fit right in the HFI like a glove. The second picture gives you a good idea of how this is going to work. I essentially made the shape
and circumferance of the HFI large enough to fit the Beyer pads.
Here are a few pictures so you can see how much better the Beyer pads are than the stock HFI-700 pads:
clearly, the pads are a lot more plush and, therefore, more comfortable.
The next order of business was to replace the headband pad. Let's be honest; the original pad is a piece of crap. It's not at all comfortable and pretty
much just concentrates pressure to one point on my head. I don't like it at all. Besides, it's glued on and the glue pull out my hair when I take them
off.
There is a thread here on head-fi wherein a member posts how to make a leather earpad for Grados, but I can't find it. The OP mentioned that eBay is a
good place to get leather samples. Search "lambskin hide" and you should get some good hits. I got a one square foot sample of black lambskin leather
for 87 cents and $6 shipping (go figure). To make a nice headband, you jsut need the leather, some thread, some foam, and skills on the sewing machine.
Luckily for me, my mother has been a custom seamstress for thirty years, so she made it for me (thanks mom!). Here are some pictures of the finished
product:
Here it is in comparison to the original pad:
Pathetic!
Here are some pictures of the parts:
...and all together:
The improvements in comfort are awesome, obviously. They are just slightly less comfortable than my DT990s, but much more than stock. The clamping force
is a bit strong, but that can be helped by bending the headband. Isolation is much improved because these pads form to my head, rather than pushing in
certain areas. They are so much softer than the stock pleather.
I know that I'm going to be inundated with questions about sound quality, so I'll just write my impressions here. If you ask for more info, I can't give
it. I've never claimed to be an audiophile, but I am definitely an audio aficcionado. I know what sounds good to me and don't really care what anyone
else thinks about my preference. So, here are my really breif impressions:
The highs are the same. I did not notice any difference between before I changed them and after. Before, they were ever so slightly sibilant, as some
have pointed out. Now, they are still ever so slightly sibilant. I can't explain how they sound. I really don't think anything I write will help you
imagine what they sound like; I would just have to make up terms to describe it and that would probably just mislead you.
The mids are definitely less pronounced. They aren't different or anything, just softer (in terms of dynamics. dynamics = volume).
The lows are the same as ever. I notice no difference at all. They retain all the wonderful punch that I loved before and love now.
Overall, the sound signature reminds me of an EQ in winamp that I used to use when I used my Bose TriPorts (way before I discovered head-fi, don't
worry!). It's a preset called "rock" and has the mids lowered and bass and trebel raised. This isn't nearly as drastic as that EQ is, but it should give
you the general idea if you have winamp and can check it out.
Keep this in mind though! I really don't like when people over-exaggerate changes after mods, so I'm not going to do that in my review. This mod was not done in order to change the sound quality of the headphone, but just to make them more comfortable. Any sound quality changes are just an unintentional side affect of the mod (although the very slight change that did happen was pretty good, IMO).
So yeah, I think that's all. I'll add more if I need to. Just remember to write long threads in notepad instead of in the thread window on the website.
You might refresh the page by accident (kill me).
Update
Here are the better lit pictures I promised:
Ultrasone HFI-700 Comfort Mods. Works with 780 also.
why dont you just using more lil' pads like DT250 (example) ? looking forward to grab an Beyer velour pads to try on my HFI580...btw thx for sharing this pads mod to us...
