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Orthodynamic Roundup - Page 61

post #901 of 21627
8/27/07 at 12:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by unbiased View Post
I find it amazing that there is a thread on these old Yamaha Ortho-Dynamic headphones from the 1970's. This thead caused me to go digging into my old junk pile(s) for the HP-2 set I remember buying back in the late 1970's and hardly ever used. I found it now and it sounds great! Highs and midrange do have an electrostatic sense to them. Amazing for 30+ years old headphones. But I have the problem of the broken thin plastic tensioning bands on the cloth headband... does anybody have a good recommended fix for this? I would love to get this headband fixedx and be able to use it today... it is a very good sounding headphone set. Not too much deep bass, but the mids and highs are nice. This thread is so long, I did not even get to read through it all... so I don't know if anyone has addressed how to fix the head band (thin deteriorated broken plastic bands) part of them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericj View Post
Basically, you replace it with a leather strap.

We all wish there were another way, but that's it.
Actually I have one in near mint condition from my HP-1's I used for the Chocolate Donuts. Whoever is in need of it PM me about it. I actually have everything from the HP-1 except the drivers and baffles, and it's all in fantastic shape including the pads. I should've thought to mention this earlier, as I'm sure one of you could use these.

Hey guys whatever happened to Inkmo? Haven't seen him around here in quite a while.
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post #902 of 21627
8/27/07 at 12:24am
Well, here's the most recent revision of my YH-100 transplant.
First some info on the transplant and modification:
  1. The fosterphones are the MB Quart QP55x headphones. These have a 56mm driver so the transplant was almost perfect. I sealed the outside edges with blu-tak to ensure the best fit.
  2. Since the QP55x is a semi-open baffle, I took the liberty of completely sealing it with blu-tak. The semi-rigid properties and pliability made it ideal.
  3. The stock damping on the QP55x made the sound tinny and sucked out the bass so I did minor tweaks. I took out the original damping disk and put in some cheap cotton felt. This gave a slight increase in the lower bass range.
  4. There are three pads I rotate on with the QP55x, each of varying thicknesses. The thickest are the stock QP55x/Beyerdynamic velour pads. The thinnest are some flat pleather pads off some old Aiwa headphones; these are circumaural but are now so flat they are supra aural. The pads almost perfectly in between these thicknesses are the Accura SR-660 velour pads. The ones you will see are the ones I enjoy the most with the YH-100 drivers (the Accura SR-660 pads).
  5. Due to the increased weight of the drivers, the headphones were very finicky when it came to moving around. To solve this, I swapped the stock headband for the headband off the YH-100. It took minor modding but it looks natural and took minimal hardware to adapt to headband to the new phones.


















Look! It even says orthodynamic headphones on the band now!
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post #903 of 21627
8/27/07 at 12:46am
Nice job on the transplant Foo. It looks like it came from the factory that way. What do the original 55x drivers look like, out of curiousity?
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post #904 of 21627
8/27/07 at 12:54am
Thread Starter 

Praying For Bass

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericj View Post
You could do the same with thin polycarbonate (read as: cuttings from a retail blisterpack) backed with uberdoubletape, maybe, but that might still catch hairs pretty easily.
This is a good idea. You could feather the sharp edges with hot glue.

Maybe long strips of the blisterpack plastic glued down on top of the broken strip with cyanoacrylate glue?




Quote:
Originally Posted by ericj
The UR40 fosterfone -- that's with a bluetak gasket between driver and baffle, bluetak over the ring of holes in the baffle, low-density felt over the back of the driver, paper reflex dot in the center of the driver (and now I'm thinking it should have been off-center), fishfoam instead of the original damping foam, and another layer of low-density felt over the back grille.
Whoa! Leaving no stone unturned!


Quote:
Originally Posted by ericj
Oh, and I've peeled all the vinyl off the pads, so they're just terry cloth.
Did you happen to listen to it before you peeled?


Quote:
Originally Posted by ericj
So now I'm wondering, when i go back in, do i add another layer of felt over the back of the driver, or use higher density felt over the back grille, or what.
This was the problem with the original DonutPhones. We were stuck with a driver that didn't have the low tuning to help the bass when the earcup volume went way up.

Yeah, try heavy damping on the open back, check for leaks, undamp the driver (oh, I hate to do that) to drop the resonant frequency and maybe just use a big chunk of opencell foam (not fishfoam) instead, take off the reflex dot (hate to do that too, but spacing the driver away from the ear, which the UR40 does slightly, has a similar effect), get flatter pads, fill some of the earcup volume with closed-cell foam, turn up the bass, use a burly amp with extra burl, dip the terrycloth pads in that liquid soft-grip stuff you put on tool handles (or just cover the outside surface, like the tape mod for the K501 pads), pray for bass, hypnotize yourself into believing you're hearing a 20Hz sine wave at 110dB SPL, curse your luck.

That's what I do.

Believe it or not, the little YHD-2 driver, being of the "dome" type, didn't have a bass problem in the UR40. Maybe not a basshead 'phone, but not bad.

.
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post #905 of 21627
8/27/07 at 12:57am
Thread Starter 
Great job on the YH-10055x-- very clever to use the original headband.

Test 'em with bass boost and binaural recordings.

Did you ever try lining the back of the open cup with felt rather than the red foam?
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post #906 of 21627
8/27/07 at 1:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wualta View Post
Great job on the YH-10055x-- very clever to use the original headband.

Test 'em with bass boost and binaural recordings.

Did you ever try lining the back of the open cup with felt rather than the red foam?
No, I haven't lined the back of the cup yet. I'm going to listen to them for a while before I decide on any more damping. I still can't really tell what's missing from the sound, and that's if there is anything missing at all.

Also, I don't really like using bass boost or EQ anymore. I figure that if I want a certain sound, I'll either use a certain set of headphones or mod what I have to fit my needs.
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post #907 of 21627
8/27/07 at 1:15am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by FooTemps View Post
Also, I don't really like using bass boost or EQ anymore.
I was suggesting it merely as a test of bass transient control.
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post #908 of 21627
8/27/07 at 1:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wualta View Post
This is a good idea. You could feather the sharp edges with hot glue.

Maybe long strips of the blisterpack plastic glued down on top of the broken strip with cyanoacrylate glue?
If I'm gonna cut thin strips of plastic in a perfect curve to match the original headband, I'll just make a new headband.

If the original strap weren't flared, heck yeah. I'd be all over it.

Quote:
Whoa! Leaving no stone unturned!
Yeah, I'd been pondering the YUHR-42 re-pot for a while.

Quote:
Did you happen to listen to it before you peeled?
No. But i have two more sets of UR-40 pleathers. I'll give 'em a try.

Quote:
This was the problem with the original DonutPhones. We were stuck with a driver that didn't have the low tuning to help the bass when the earcup volume went way up.
This is a good point. The 20ppi fishfoam is acoustically equivalent to air, more or less.

Quote:
Yeah, try heavy damping on the open back, check for leaks, undamp the driver (oh, I hate to do that) to drop the resonant frequency and maybe just use a big chunk of opencell foam (not fishfoam) instead, take off the reflex dot (hate to do that too, but spacing the driver away from the ear, which the UR40 does slightly, has a similar effect), get flatter pads, fill some of the earcup volume with closed-cell foam, turn up the bass, use a burly amp with extra burl, dip the terrycloth pads in that liquid soft-grip stuff you put on tool handles (or just cover the outside surface, like the tape mod for the K501 pads), pray for bass, hypnotize yourself into believing you're hearing a 20Hz sine wave at 110dB SPL, curse your luck.

That's what I do.
Heh.

I am suddenly envisioning a bizarre arrangement where i cut an oval of high density foam, cut a circle out of the middle of that - same size as the driver - and plug that with a cylinder of lower-density foam acting as a spring, but which is also wrapped with a high density felt, or maybe lined with a ring of that bizarre moldable foam i mentioned.

I'm thinking here of the little felt crown on the back of a DT770 driver.

But maybe this is all just crazy talk.

Quote:
Believe it or not, the little YHD-2 driver, being of the "dome" type, didn't have a bass problem in the UR40.
Oh, I believe it.
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post #909 of 21627
8/27/07 at 1:23am
Nice YH transplant !

Just wish them big Yamaha drivers are not so expensive...
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post #910 of 21627
8/27/07 at 1:54am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by swt61 View Post
Hey guys whatever happened to Inkmo? Haven't seen him around here in quite a while.
The usual student/artist struggles: http://inkmo.deviantart.com/
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post #911 of 21627
8/27/07 at 1:57am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by AudioCats View Post
Just wish them big Yamaha drivers are not so expensive...
You might not need 'em if the Sawafujis test out well. Remember the YHD-2 transplant! You gotta believe!
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post #912 of 21627
8/27/07 at 2:12am
Man, my YH-550x is really really confusing to me now. I'm liking them with both the flat pads and the medium pads. Earlier the mids and highs were affected by switching to flat pads, but now the mids and highs just SING with any of the pads I use now. All that is tweaked is bass! It's freaking amazing. I'm just amazed by how the distance doesn't change anything negatively anymore and all that damping does is change the bass response.
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post #913 of 21627
8/27/07 at 2:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wualta View Post
You might not need 'em if the Sawafujis test out well. Remember the YHD-2 transplant! You gotta believe!
I like big drivers, plus I still have a set of QP housings waiting for some 53-57mm drivers to fill them....


Too bad my square SFI midranges don't have enough treble.....
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post #914 of 21627
8/27/07 at 11:42am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by FooTemps View Post
Earlier the mids and highs were affected by switching to flat pads, but now the mids and highs just SING with any of the pads I use now. All that is tweaked is bass! It's freaking amazing. I'm just amazed by how the distance doesn't change anything negatively anymore and all that damping does is change the bass response.
I don't have a good explanation, other than ear-education, for the change, but earpad swaps should only change the bass and lower mids. Sometimes so much bass is lost with the wrong type of pad that it may seem that the midrange and treble have changed, but.. dunno. Certainly glad to hear reports of singing. Singing headphones is never a bad thing.

Now, if the shape of the earcup cavity is changed via an earpad swap, that's something else entirely.

And damping has two effects, as we discovered earlier-- it tightens the bass and makes it more impactful, effectively increasing the bass, but it also moves the resonant frequency of the driver upward, reducing the bass.
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post #915 of 21627
8/27/07 at 11:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wualta View Post
Well, let us know how your T50 sounds. You might even try giving it some gaskets.
Will do. I didn't expect them to be so cheap but it's a good way to join another underground headphone cult...

Do you think the Corda Aria can drive them or do I need to buy/build a new amp? A nice OTL or DHT SET might just do the trick...
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