Sennheiser HD650 Appreciation Thread!! - Page 547

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattTCG 

Where would be a good location to purchase this product? 

I've found it for a good price at Musicians Friend in the past.  You can also order it on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/CAIG-Laboratories-G5S-6-DeoxIT-Gold/dp/B007S6ZZOA/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1350042794&sr=1-5&keywords=deoxit

^^thanks for the linkage!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattTCG 

Hey, I put the stock GE tubes back in today and they have a significant hum. Are they done?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattTCG 

^^thanks for the linkage!!

Humming usually implies a ground issue, but if other tubes are fine....then it's got to be the tubes.  Tubes are tubes, they've been siting a a warehouse for a quarter century or more....it happens.  I found the GE's are a little more prone to becoming microphonic than others, though for me they mostly became just microphonic or screecy....they hadn't developed a hum per se. 

Also check to see, around the GE logo, does it say Japan anywhere? If it says nothing it's USA...if it says Japan....those things drop like flies (There weren't supposed to be any Japan ones, and they were pulled from inventory on discovery.

But it's not price dependent...I have a $50 Tungsram tube that developed an ever growing hiss after a very short time to the point that the white noise was louder than the music after a few months. It happens.

Deoxit could help....I love that stuff, and clean all my pins with it.  But while it has helped removal/insertion for me, and saved on wear &tear, it never solved any of my bad tube noises which were simply bad tubes.

People who say HD650 has no treble has never used them with a dying Japanese made GE 6BZ7!

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattTCG 

Yeah, I took them out and reseated them. No difference. Put in another pair of bulbs and everything was fine. I was careful with them. Not sure what happened. 

Hi Matt,

Maybe the tubes are too microphonic and you are hearing it as a hum.  It is so easy to interchange the two sometimes.  In this case, contact cleaner will not help IMO.

To find out if it is the 1st or the second tube doing this or both, just replace the tube one by one using a known quiet tube.  I believe both of the tubes are gain stages, or maybe the first one is a gain stage and the second is a cathode follower, then output to FET's on the Lyr. If it is the latter, then just replace the first one as the second one should not hum since cathode follower's gain is unity.

One thing you can do is, looking at the layout of the Lyr, when you hear the hum, touch the 1st or the last tube and push it down lightly, if the hum you are hearing decreases, then it is tube microphonics you are having.  This can be minimized by tube dampers but based on the Lyr's construction, it will be very difficult to install tube dampers on the tubes it uses.

Abe

Quote:

Originally Posted by amandarae 

Hi Matt,

 

Maybe the tubes are too microphonic and you are hearing it as a hum.  It is so easy to interchange the two sometimes.  In this case, contact cleaner will not help IMO.

 

To find out if it is the 1st or the second tube doing this or both, just replace the tube one by one using a known quiet tube.  I believe both of the tubes are gain stages, or maybe the first one is a gain stage and the second is a cathode follower, then output to FET's on the Lyr. If it is the latter, then just replace the first one as the second one should not hum since cathode follower's gain is unity.

 

One thing you can do is, looking at the layout of the Lyr, when you hear the hum, touch the 1st or the last tube and push it down lightly, if the hum you are hearing decreases, then it is tube microphonics you are having.  This can be minimized by tube dampers but based on the Lyr's construction, it will be very difficult to install tube dampers on the tubes it uses.

 

 

Abe

It's not a follower it's an R&L gain stage.  Each tube is on a different channel, and swapping the tubes will change the channel the sound is in.

Does anyone know why the HD650 price went up so much sometime this year? I saw on Amazon that the price is up to $500 which is $130 more than I paid

They're great headphones and absolutely worth it at that price I was just surprised and now I feel like I got a real bargain 

Quote:

Originally Posted by IEMCrazy 

 

It's not a follower it's an R&L gain stage.  Each tube is on a different channel, and swapping the tubes will change the channel the sound is in.

Hi,

Yes.  So both are gain stages, thanks.    If you are just tracking hum, then it is best to swap the tubes one by one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redwall 

Does anyone know why the HD650 price went up so much sometime this year? I saw on Amazon that the price is up to $500 which is $130 more than I paid

 

They're great headphones and absolutely worth it at that price I was just surprised and now I feel like I got a real bargain 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mcberto 

Sennheiser had a MAP thingy with resellers. If resellers did not honor senn's suggested retail price, they were either not consider authorized reseller or products sold under them are not covered by warrant.

Yeah, basically Sennheiser's MSRP prices are greatly inflated over their actual wholesale costs, and the idea is to provide dealers with huge incentive to move their product, and a number of dealers who are also H-F'ers have commented that Senn provides the best incentives and more or less the best margins because of this.  But larger dealers like Amazon were severely undercutting the small dealers by just taking less of the "incentive" margin and selling at their usual markup over wholesale, which put it at $350 or so.  No doubt the dealer network complained about being severely undercut out of their incentive-markup model and Senn put their foot down and demanded "you will charge this price or you're not an authorized dealer and your customers get no warranty."   Many have questioned the legality of such a practice in the US, considering price and margin is the very definition of retail competition (many companies have a mandatory advertised  price, but a mandatory selling price is a new thing.  Senn, Shure, and Grado seem bent on such a model, but such is the way it is at the moment.   It's been theorized that HD800 actually pulls less margin per unit than HD650 since HD800 costs so much ore to produce due to the hand assembly. But both are certainly pulling a good margin.

If you don't need a warranty though there's always "gray market."  I mean, really, when was the last time you heard of an HD650 dying other than due to external damage?   People can gripe about plastic all they want but unless you abuse them (not covered under warranty anyway) these things are tanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by IEMCrazy 

 

LOL, who's the cold-hearted jerk that decided to hook you on Lorenz and Telefunkens? That's pretty low practice.... Those Lorenz are up to, what, $200 a tube now? If you can even find them...

 

 

LOL.  I think my original broken Lyr gave me a preview of what blocks would sound like with HD650......I wouldn't advise it

Wow!  Really?

Is it the same kind of tubes in the pics or different?

Quote:

Originally Posted by amandarae 

Wow!  Really?

 

Is it the same kind of tubes in the pics or different?

 

6BZ7, ECC88, E88CC, 6922, and by extension PCC88.  Yep, that's the same type of tube.  The specifically high priced Lorenz when talking Lyr is the "Tri-Mica" models.  They were dirt cheap a year ago....now they're pretty much depleted so the price is sky high.   Technically speaking the magic of their popularity revolves largely around closed back headphones like Ultrasones.  The thing that makes people seek them for any price isn't as important on open backs like HD650.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IEMCrazy 

 

6BZ7, ECC88, E88CC, 6922, and by extension PCC88.  Yep, that's the same type of tube.  The specifically high priced Lorenz when talking Lyr is the "Tri-Mica" models.  They were dirt cheap a year ago....now they're pretty much depleted so the price is sky high.   Technically speaking the magic of their popularity revolves largely around closed back headphones like Ultrasones.  The thing that makes people seek them for any price isn't as important on open backs like HD650.

Thanks!

Abe

I bought a Matrix M-Stage to pair with the HD650's.  Seems like there are slightly better choices on the market, but for the price and the fact I needed something that would be a *portable* desk amp that I could throw in my bag and carry between offices I figured this was pretty good. It looks like the two preferred options for setting up this amp are the LM4562 at 18 gain or the class A biasing 627's?  Does anyone have any experience with this amp and or these setups that can chime in?

Let us know how it sound, pls :)

Love your avatar! "Pharaohs" is my fave!

So far I've been really impressed with the Yulong A800 mini Class A headphone amp paired with my HD650. For $180, this amp has pretty much everything I need from a budget amp: clarity, neutrality and power. The dynamics are excellent. Good soundstage, too. So far, I've owned the E9, P4, Asgard, O2 and the AHA-120. I previously held the AHA-120 as the best of the lot. I think the A800 is at least as good and beats the other amps. Its a really clean amp. Yeah, its still a budget amp but I think it performs better than its price tag with the HD650.