K701 - A restoration project

I once had a pair of K701s and absolutely loved them. But after acquiring a pair of DT990s and wanting to fund a particular purchase, I decided to sell the AKGs. I’ve regreted it ever since.

While perusing the FS boards one night, I came across a pair of K701s recabled to balanced termination with Mogami quad posted by fellow Head-Fi’er, ASR. He detailed the problems that this pair suffered complete with close-up shots (NOTE: none of the problems were caused by him). There were some significant scratches, the hole cut into the right driver cover was pretty cobby and the earcups were frozen – they didn’t move. Due to the issues at hand, he was offering them for relatively little. Fresh off my Beyerheiser HD880 Frankenphone build I was in the mood for another project. After seeing ASR’s pics I wanted to return these mistreated K701s to their former glory… but with a twist.

So let’s start with some “before” pics:



Here is a close-up shot of the scratches on the driver’s cover. Also notice the ugly hole cut, gouged, whatever into the right side cover for the conversion to direct wired drivers.



With the driver cover off I found the reason why the earcups didn’t move. The earcups pivot on an XY axis due to a clever gimbal setup. The person who recabled these used some kind of silicone/glue to adhere the heatshrinked wires to an internal support of the cover. Would never be my choice but okay – at least they thought of strain relief. However, they got overly enthusiastic and used way too much of the adhesive which proceeded to cover the Y axis pivot. It also fused the support that functions as the X axis thus freezing the whole gimbal.





So I proceeded to gently pry and pull off this stuff. Some of it was still pliable – like silicone – and some of it was hard through and through. After some anxious moments I was able to free the driver from the gimbal. You can see here a small mountain of the stuff on the driver. Thankfully this bit came off in one chunk with some stern but gentle persuading.



After spending an hour or so on each earcup, I finally had them completely disassembled and rid of the cursed substance.

Next - repairs and prep.

Hmmm... I thought I took pics throughout this project but now I'm not finding them. Therefore you'll just have to use your imagination. However, I will include a pic with one earcup completely disassembled. I meant to put this in my first post.



I sanded all of the white plastics in preparation for painting. The only piece I could not disassemble was the anchor piece on the dual wire compression band. So I wrapped everything but with paper and painter’s tape. I used Tamiya basic putty to fill in the holes for the cables on both sides. The reason I filled in the stock hole as well is that the way these covers were made, the exiting cable is supposed to be off-center and use a straight internal support for strain relief. The problem is this internal support is orientated on the same side of both covers therefore the left cover orients the cable towards the rear of the earcup. On the right side it is orientated towards the front. Sorry but the OCD in me can’t allow that so I came up with an alternative. I drilled holes bottom center of each cover. It was a bit tricky but they came out nice.

So with all the pieces sanded I then had to mask certain areas. The tricky thing with this kind of painting is that you have to mask off all areas that mate with other pieces when fit is tight. Half a millimeter of paint and finish can cause the two parts to no longer fit and then you have to scrape away until they do. Masking little parts is a PITA but it pays off in the end in spades.

I decided to jettison the recable job. I wasn’t a fan of how it looked and though I have nothing against Mogami’s quad cables, I prefer their mini-mic since it is smaller in diameter and much more flexible. The cable used is just too thick for my tastes and a nuisance due to its relative inflexibility. So I built myself a cable as I usually do. I replaced the ugly-to-me cream colored Neutrik XLR boots with a red and a black to indicate right and left respectively. I don’t have a balanced amp but my Central Station does have a volume controlled balanced out. I had to build male TRS to female XLR adapters to try it out but I wanted to do this rather than terminate my K701 cable in dual TRS since using TRS jacks is atypical with most balanced amps.

My next post which will be tomorrow will show the final result.

I had a few ideas about paint schemes. One that I was real interested in though, would've required a custom mix to get the color just right. I got lucky that ASR posted these and I was able to get them essentially for nothing since I bought them with funds from a couple of recable jobs I was doing. I wanted to keep this project on the cheap but still have it come out nice. I think I succeeded and real happy with the results.

Couldn't help myself last night so I threw together a balanced to SE adapter and had a listen. Aaaaaaaaah. Bliss. Just as I remembered them.

Well here it is, folks. I guess I've fallen into the habit of naming my project 'phones thanks to my good buddy, swt61. So I've christened these The Dark Knight.






Now I realize the 601s are black but it is a matte finish. I wanted these to be nice and glossy. So after a number of layers of paint I also sprayed on a number of layers of clear. I then proceeded to polish them with 6 increasingly finer grits of micromesh. Topped off with a coat of wax. There is some orange peel since I should have done polishing between coats of paint but the project was taking long enough as it is. You have to really look closely to see the orange peel so I'm satisfied. Also, with all the polishing and the wax they feel nice and smooth to the touch.

If you look closely at the last pic you can see a subtle flat spot. That's where the putty I used to fill in the hole has shrunk a bit. Again, you have to look for it so I'm not going to touch it... again. Yeah, I went back a couple of times to add layers of putty. Even after some painting.

Overall I'm very satisfied with the results. Especially considering this project cost me virtually nothing. A big thanks to Asr and swt61 for making this project possible. Thanks to them I now have a pair of K701s back in the stable. Needless to say, these ain't goin' nowhere!!!!