W5000 Fitz Mod Guide - Page 17

I think the insane bass of the L3000 was great but next model should have been more classical or laidback and they did W5000. I do hope they blend the two with the next flagship as I love my ESW10, but $3600 is WAY too much for L3K. I have my Denon D7000 for my bass like that atm and might investigate L3000 again but not for awhile, Id rather upgrade some other things first.

If anyone missed this thread, I'ts absolutly worth the bump. I've just completed the F5005 mod and it's just SUPERB! F5005 are simply a better headphone the W5000, Period. Should somebody from AT read this, you should hire Fitz for some serious consulting! Thanks man, And all the others who contributed to this awsome result.

Sorry to wipe the dust on this thread just for those who have ATH-AD700 I applied something along the lines of the Fitz's mod and it produces warmer base and a little more punch. I didn't cover the driver, just the around it.

Ive had my W5000's for a while now and I've noticed- like others, some serious fatigue like I've never dreamed of. They're beautiful sounding cans, dont get me wrong, and after some bending of the wire they fit very well. However, I'm curious what the best way to help limit this fatigue may be, whereas I plan on bringing these into the office and using them many hours a week. I'm not terribly concerned with increasing the bass- after all- if I wanted bass I would not have purchased these cans... I just want to limit the fatigue. I feel like I've had the volume turned up far too high- and this isn't the case. Do you think that just doing mod 1 and 3 would help reduce fatigue without making it bassier? Is mod 3 simply replacing the foam you took out in step one with blue tack? 

 

It looks like the F5005 is what I'm looking for but I can't seem to find it and the link on the first page of this thread is broken.

Found it, hopefully this updated link works- F5005:http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/214363/w5000-fitz-mod-guide/120#post_2623971

 

I think I'll try this if it helps with the fatigue. Pretty simple...

Just apply the tack all around the driver, without covering up the slits, and then add a ravioli!

I plan on keeping the stock white and the gray dampening agents in.

 

Thanks for the help guys. 

 

EDIT: In heinsight that was a lot of rambling... Bottom line... F5005 will help with fatigue too on the W5000 right? Also? The white ring is put back in… How do you prevent this from collapsing the raviloli?

Edited by Butler - 5/22/11 at 7:11am

Okay well, I did the F5005 Mod, and honestly I'm really impressed. I'm not sure how technically a ring of putty and a play dough ravioli dampen some of the sharper mids and highs, while bringing out a little bass- but I'm sold. Hopefully this addresses their super fatigue issues, I'm thinking it will.

 

There's one problem though, and I'm really hoping someone can give me some feedback here… I'm sure this putty tends to shrink up a bit after it's out and dry and such. Has anyone opened their cans months later and taken a look to see if this is the case? I'll be posting pictures soon but I'm really hoping someone can calm my worries about having to go in and touch these up because I have a feeling the putty might shrink and have some of the silk show through.

Fitz? Anyone else?

hmmm me thinks Fritz's been MIA for the longest atleast round these parts. OTOH i think i can provide a clue as to why u have bass now. shorts answers damping. certain materials trap low freq & instead of dispersing, reflects it back to your ears. u can give other damping material a try such as dynamat or other such sound insulating material.

 

bluetak works but personally i find heavy & think it'll dry out in due time. YMMV

Well I understand, for the most part, what this mod does and how it does it- except for maybe the ravioli. I'm not arguing with the sound, after the modification I like what I hear. It did have an effect on isolation and monitoring, in terms of hearing all the different parts clearly- and it did have an effect on how the acoustic guitar sounds. But... For less fatiguing mids it's worth it. I dont think I'll change it back.

 

I used generic bluetak- it was beige colored. I had some sitting out that I played around with and it doesn't seem to be shrinking or changing shape so I think I'm good luck. I'm going to check in on it in a month or so. Here's some of my own images.

 

 

 

great!

quite a while ago (this thread is >4yrs old!) i remembered someone had good experiences with alu foil. its def way lighter than bluetak & wont dryout fo sho! i no longer have a W5k but someone else mite wanna take a gander at this. something to ponder ya

 

Hm. Thought I read the whole thing. I'll have to go back through it. Anyone else who did this years ago have any added insight? Dried up or shrunken blue tack? Aluminum foil sounds like an interesting idea, adheared with some sort of tape I'm assuming. I feel like it would have the potential to buzz, but at the same time, tame the 5k's less than than the F5005 mod does. Thanks for the input scottie!

no worries. i think it was a friend of mine that actually tried tin foil mod instead of bluetak. i bliv if u fold the tin foil atleast once & press it in tightly to cover as much space as possible, it should eliminate buzzing. after that u can also try to fill up the rest of the cup with some type of fibre for further dampening. try it out & let us know. should be fun at the very least.

Hi Guys,

I know it's an old thread, but I hope there are still some people alive who used to do the F5005 mod. If so, please let me know if you've ever tried to use the blue tak not on the whole surface, but only part of it, e.g. half of it. What was the result?

 

After doing the mod myself I feel I have too much bass (even with all the dampening materials in) and maybe a little too recessed mids (however I have always found them recessed in my W5000 setup so the mod might have not change that). Anyway I thought that blue tak that covers only a part of surface could solve the problem. However I've once heard that if you don't do the whole surface you won't get any effect of the F5005 mod. Is it true?

 

Edited by korzena - 3/28/12 at 1:57pm

OK. So I've experimented myself and made a variation of original F5005 mod. I like it so much that I probably won't be changing the mod anymore and will stay with this little variation. I am so happy with it that I would like to share it with you, too.

 

So initially I've made original F5005 mod - I covered the whole surface with blue tak and left both (grey and white) dampening materials in.

The mod made promising change to the sound of W5000, but I really didn't like the too much bass from which it got a little headache because of the air pressure. So I decide to try the following two modification of the mod:

1) I made a two little 'holes' in the blue tak surface (blue tak is still covering almost the whole surface except for the two little 'windows' i've made)

2) I removed the grey dampening material (white is still in place)

 

The result for me is that I got best of the F5005 mod. I have more bass, clear, but not piercing treble, tamed higher-mids and soundstage and imaging are like in the original W5000. Just great! I am really happy I made more experiments with the mod. Thank you to the original inventors of the mod!

 

Now I can rest and relax listening to the beautiful sound of W5000:)

Edited by korzena - 4/1/12 at 10:46am

So now can we send you our W5000 and you do the mod for us?  For a fee of course.

:)

I hate doing any DIY, but I was 'forced' to. I always felt W5000 has potential to sound much better. Firstly I tried to enhance its capabilities through the rest of the audio chain (I got HA5000 amp, DAC with tube buffer, HiFace USB/SPDIF converter and appropriate analog interconnects and digital cable). It helped to some extent, but I was still not fully satisfied. So I decide to try to DIY mod the headphones themselves as a last resort. And it is worth it!

 

I would be interested in opinions of people who tried any modifications of the Fitz mod. It seems that even small variations of this mod can make quite big differences in how W5000 sounds.