Modified Shure SRH440

After a year of use, the stock pleather ear pads on my SRH440 dried and cracked. They were functionally torture devices, and needed replacement. But even stock, these ear pads are not very good. Many people upgraded their SRH440's pads to the one from the SRH840, as the 840 has better quality pads. But then again, I don't like the feel of pleather on my skin. Around this time, Shure released the SRH940, which has velour pads. After some research, I came upon this thread (http://www.head-fi.org/t/550377) that confirmed the 940's pads will fit on the 840. And since it is common for people to use the 840's pads on the 440, I concluded that the 940's pad would also fit on the 440. I then ordered the HPAEC940 at a local Shure retailer, and received them 6 months later (in Canada, this waiting is annoyingly common). CONFIRMED! The 940's pads DO fit on the 440. And how much more comfortable!

Still, after a month or so, I was starting to feel my ear lobe touching the screen cloth at the bottom of the ear pads. After some testing, I realized it was only the back of my ears that touched. I recycled foam containers to fix that. The foam is about 5mm thick. I traced the shape of the cups on the foam, and cut half circles out of it. They are like a big "C", about a cm large. I had to cut the C in the middle in order to fit the pieces inside the pads. With careful and precise cutting, the inserts hold in place and don't move around. The result is great, my ear lobes barely touch the cloth, and the drivers are now angled forward. There's a small increase in soundstage width as a side effect. I decided not to make the front of the cups deeper as a compromise. See, if you make the cups deeper, you will get more pressure on your head as you're expanding the headband. You also make the resonant chamber larger, which will mess up the frequency response of the drivers (tried and confirmed).

Now my ears were happy, but the top of my head was not. In other words, the stock headband hurts. It has virtually no padding. For a while I attached a piece of packing foam under the headband, but this was ugly and did not last long as the foam compressed to nothing. Again searching for solutions, I found these threads (http://www.head-fi.org/t/484116 http://www.head-fi.org/t/485381) containing priceless pictures of the interior of the headband. The subject of this hack was an SRH840, but the SRH440 is basically the same thing. So I ordered the Sennheiser HD650's headband pad (PN 88597) at a local Sennheiser retailer, and received it 6 months later (did I say I lived in Canada?). I went for the HD650's pad because experience and analyzing told me the shape of the pad, with the hole in the middle, would be the best solution. I then took a knife to my stock headband, and disassembled the whole thing. Even though swbf2cheater already said it, I was shocked by the mass of useless material the headband contained. It actually has a huge piece of rubber, that has no apparent use other than to make the headband look beefy. I discarded it all and glued the Seenheiser pad directly to the metal band. I then trimmed down the pleather that covered the headband and stitched it to the small ledge of the pad, using double faced tape to stick it to the metal band, so that it doesn't slide and crease. The end result is both nice to the eye and to the skull. In addition to the gained padding, the total weight of the headphone dropped by 54g, or 16%.
With all the comfort modifications I applied to my SRH440, it's now a very comfortable headphone. A lot more than stock, anyways.

I always enjoyed the sound of the SRH440. It has a very "in your face" presentation that places guitars and voices right beside your ears. It makes for a very exciting and personal experience. If there's one aspect of it that always left me wanting more, is the bass. The SRH440 has an old school "studio" frequency response, with the bass rolling off sharply bellow 100Hz. This makes them very boring with electronic and other bass driven music styles. In my attempts to pull more bass out of my now comfortable 440, I came upon a thread (http://www.head-fi.org/t/456493) showing off the so called "Foam plug mod", in which a piece of material is removed from the port in the middle of the drivers. This foam plug is there to restrict the flow of air, tightening up the bass and lowering the distortion. I tried it, and was immediately blown away. Alright, I admit, I tried it with Dubstep. But it was great! The headphones now produced bass in quantity, and seemed to be able to go very deep. Then I tried Hard Rock, and Metal... which was very bad. Bloated bass, distortion, muddy mids. The whole presentation was warmer, and it lost the clarity that it once showed. After some use, I could see why many people reverted to the plugs. But while I was auditioning this modification, I received the AKG Q701. The Q701 is a bright headphone with very little bass. Not good for Electronic. So I decided to keep the foam plug out of the 440, not because I found it better, but because these two headphones now complement each others. I use the SRH440 for Electronic and slow music like Folk and Classic Rock. Sometime the bass is just more fun. For faster music, I use the Q701. Some day I will place the plug back inside, just to see the difference. I might change my mind then.

Last month I placed the plugs back in to see. The first word that came to mind was "clean". They sound a lot cleaner with the plugs, but after a couple of days I could not stand the lack of bass. So I cut small pieces of low density foam to replace the original plugs. This offers a nice compromise. It has a satisfying amount of bass, without being bloated or otherwise ruining the balance.