Yamaha YH-1000 help!

Use this search engine. Type in <yh1000> or <yh1k> as search terms in the first box at the top, arrange by date and watch for posts by dBel84 to see what you might be up against. Current theory is that some YH-1000 diaphragms were corroded by the decomposition of the earpad covers, making repair difficult but possible. Good luck!

My biggest headphone regret (not that I've been into this long enough to have many), was when I sold my Yamaha HP-1s for peanuts on eBay. I didn't ever get the chance to race them against my HD 580s/600s/K701s, and really regret getting rid of them. They did sound very nice, although I'm unable to remember how they sounded in comparison to my current crop of cans.

If it's an easy repair, definitely get the YH-1000s fixed.

welcome mterle

As wualta mentioned, the YH1K is highly susceptible to corrosion  -  non of the other vintage yamaha's that I have worked on have this issue. I am not saying that this is the problem with your particular pair but all things considered, it would be pretty high on the cards. How you proceed is really dependent on your skills and comfort level. These headphones have been hitting the $1000 mark on private auction so they are valuable merely from a collectors standpoint. The new age ortho's will most likely push this value down but they are non the less, still highly regarded. 

The first thing to establish is whether the problem that you are experiencing is due to a cable / plug concern or the driver itself. 

If you have a DMM (digital multimeter) you could try and measure the resistance across each driver - this entails opening up the headphones and measuring at the driver terminals. If one is reading some obscene resistance - it is most likely the corrosion issue. 

The fix is not overly complicated but does improve with practice. You have to cut the outer holding ring which clamps the magnets together, separate the magnets and inspect the driver. Using a DMM you localize the point of offending corrosion and then you repair that section of the trace after a thorough cleaning. Once all is restored - you close it all up again and hope it doesn't recur anytime soon. 

To give you an idea of how common this is, I have had 4 YH1000's pass through my hands and all of them needed this treatment ( some more than others ) The post repair sonic enjoyment is unchanged , at least based on people's response to any of the ones that have been repaired. 

If this is a little intimidating, send me a PM   ..dB

you are so lucky to inherited a yh1000 from your father

@ mterle:

so you're the one who list em on ebay several days ago...right ?

nice cans anyway...goodluck with the restore, db already give the best hint for your YH1000...

@ Donald:

way to go, ortho savior...

I performed the operation that wualta described on my yh-100's (first yh-100's recorded to have had this problem, as it is normally a YH-1000 issue). 

It is much simpler than it sounds to fix, but is definitely no easy task. If you'd like, you can PM me and I can give you an instant messaging address where I can go through it more thoroughly with you.

I can't take credit for the lifesaving YH-1K operating procedure-- it originated with our own resident orthosurgeon and Zen master, dBel84.