The Stax thread (New) - Page 100

Thanks also Duggeh

Managed to do it without a pallette knife though.


I took the bar out of the main body put it in the the inner ring of the pad. Then I pealed the outer part of the pad back placed the bar back and incrementally slotted the outerv ring of the pad it into its designated home.

Scary and difficult but everything seems OK.


Regards

T.C

Glad to hear it. It's scary the first time but easy after that.

Oddly enough there's a solder pad on the pcb where the metal standoff is. I don't doubt that there's nothing on the other side of it, though.

Yeah, it's quite clean now. Cleaner than most pennies at least. I'll go over the traces with an eraser and then some contact cleaner just for spit shine.

Edit: I also swabbed all joints with kester RMA flux, reflowed all the solder, and in some cases sucked off excess solder, and in some of those cases applied a little new solder. The board then had a nice long bath in denatured ethyl alcohol.

I figure I'll open up this driver and re-do the wire for the front stator anyway. The brass rivet that holds on the tab for the post is corroded, so the wire is probably in sorry shape. I figure I'll run a filament of bare SPC wire from the stator and up through the rivet, and then solder and trim at the rivet after reassembly. With good quality flux i shouldn't have to apply much heat to get a good joint.

That's something else that that isn't present in my set. What the hell were Koss thinking with all these revisions. I have two sets of Stax New SR-3 that are from the same era and while they were made some years apart the only difference is that the older unit was harder to open. Stax had filled one of the screw holes with epoxy so users couldn't open up their phones but they dropped this later.

If some of the caps or resistors aren't fried it must be the adapter that is acting up.

I have just received the Sigma Pro and have discovered that it just simply falls of my head. My head is shaped strangely... Haha

Have yet to listen to them though. Still waiting for driver unit.

There is no clamp force at all so no headbanging. They will sound a bit odd at first but you get used to it and they can be stunning with some tracks.

Given the driver orientation, does the Sigma work well with binaural material?

I have a capacitance meter (or three) so i can test the caps.

I also wonder if the foam i used is conductive at high voltages - i did steal it from the packing material for a replacement laptop dvd drive. I need to stop by the fabric store anyway, I'll get new foam.

Some have said that the insulation in the ESP9 cables is prone to getting stiff and cracking over the years, so, that could be an issue i guess.

I'll try and measure the bias voltage, too.

It did a great job even though I haven't spent much time listening to binaural recordings. It isn't really the driver position that gives the Sigma its unique sound but rather the housing and how it affects the drivers.

I will also be getting a normal SR-Sigma soon to compare...

The foam could be conductive at HV but I haven't had any troubles. I usually use car washing sponges as a foam supply because it is very open and not very dense.

The cables in these old phones all become stiff with age but I haven't had one crack yet. I would check it out to give the headphones a final clean bill of health.

I would say no. Neither are they any good with Dolby Headphone. I have been very happy with the 404 with Dolby however.

Agreed. I use these and they are very good.

I will try this. Thanks.

I spent some time last night making comparisons betwen the SRX3 and other Stax. It's a pretty good set of phones, the main weakness is a lack of bass at the very bottom. It seems to have some good bass, but it just shuts downbelow a certain some point compared to the Lambda Nova and 404.

Also the SRDX amp is better than I would have expected, given the it hooks up through a headphone jack. I compared it with the Stax SRA12S preamp/headphone amp and initially there wasn't that much difference. As the amp warmed up, the differences were more evident and the the SRA12S sounded cleaner and more powerful.

Comparing the SRX3 with the 404 run from an SRM3, again as the systems warmed up, the differences became more pronounced. The 404 has a good deal more bass, both midbass and at the bottom. Also the treble is much sweeter. Eg. sopranos and boy sopranos sounded sweeter on the 404. The SRX3 sounded somewhat harsh and sources sounded closer, probably because of more midrange in the SRX3.

I think the SRX3 has a fairly flat response from upper bass to lower treble and that may be part of the reason for its popularity as a monitoring phone. It is quite revealing over those frequencies.

However, it does not sound as good as the 404 on most kinds of material, but it is still very nice.

I notice that those who tout the SRX3 over other Lambdas are mostly using transformers and power amps. I had such a set-up many years ago and I don't recall it being that great but like many things , the exact equipment, cables etc. can make a big difference. If the tranformers are that good then I would want to hear the 404 run that way.

They are very good phones but they have their flaws and those flaws are magnified when you open up the backwave. The stock cable is crap and they sound much better with the original Lambda ribbon cable but they are still a bit bright with a boxed in midrange. Still they are better then any of the SR-1/3/5 line and if you can get them cheap jump on them but for me they can't compete with the Lambda line and are in third place of the supra aural stats I've heard. The Suprex PEP-74 and Beyer ET1000 beat it but they are rare and hard to get.

I find the SR-X a more enjoyable headphone than the 404 I heard a while back. The 404 is a great headphone, but the SR-X has a certain trueness and focus to the sound that I've found unparalleled in the other headphones I've heard. The the SR-X is flawed indeed, but it has something special about it. Granted, I haven't heard either headphone at their best. (SRM-1/MKII for the SR-X MKIII and SRM-313 for the 404.) I'm willing bet that the headphones of the vintage Lambda series are more euphonic than the 404 and enjoyable? I need to try the Lambda Pro sometime. I would also love to hear the other lesser-known non-Stax electrostats someday as well.