Replacing drivers for Beyerdynamic DT880
Mar 14, 2015 at 2:46 AM Post #16 of 31
Happy to help bro. I sweat bullets when I had to do that on mine and the tweezers I used were magnetic and got stuck to the rare earth magnet a few times. I was so lucky I didn't tear the driver membrane. It's been 2 years and the problem has not happened again. It pays to take the foam off the earpads once a month, go over everything with some tape to pull hairs out, and tweezer the difficult ones. Hair is as tough as an equivalent strand of copper and they can work themselves really deep into things.
 
Mar 7, 2017 at 5:17 PM Post #18 of 31
Has anyone figured how to buy a driver from Beyerdynamic with shipment to a European country other than the ones they ship to from their German site (only six countries)? I live in Poland and need a driver, it has the distortion problem.
 
I did inspect it for hair etc., no joy. No hair or other stuff on the diaphragm, no tears on the diaphragm or paper filter, wiring's fine too. The coil definitely scratches against the magnet (or something that got inside) during stronger movement. I can only listen at low volume (small movement is still fine).
 
Or maybe there's a way to disassemble the driver itself? There could be something in the magnet tunnel where the coil moves.
 
Mar 7, 2017 at 6:37 PM Post #19 of 31
The driver is only held in by an adhesive ring around the edge, and the soldered ends of the voice coil wire. It can be pulled out of the magnet too easily. The problem is getting the surround un-glued and plus you don't know if it's the coil or the magnet that's making the noise so not worth it to try to swap the coil. You would swap the driver. I would figure it would be easier to get parts in Poland being so close to Germany but I know that drivers are not offered on their store. You should contact Beyer directly for either a part or a repair quote. That's what I had to do in order to get new click adjuster shims for the head band, since the part wasn't offered for sale at the time. 
 
Mar 7, 2017 at 9:10 PM Post #20 of 31
I was thinking about something else, getting in there from the back, without un-gluing the surround. It looks like it could be accessed and the magnet could be pulled out to the back - maybe. Yes, I know it's probably a deformed coil that scratches anyway. Long shot. 
 
There are some parts available in Poland, but not drivers. I emailed Beyerdynamic in Germany and their Polish distributor, we'll see. Maybe I'll find someone with German address who will order it for me. Getting the thing repaired by Beyerdynamic would be too expensive - I'd pay shipment + labor on top of the cost of the part, I think it would double the cost of repair.
 
Mar 8, 2017 at 2:23 AM Post #21 of 31
 Yeah it's really going to depend on how helpful they are in response to the email. If they want to quote you a cost for the part with the understanding it's not for a warranty but instead is something you want and are willing to do yourself without it coming back to bite them "They sent me a driver and I broke it worse, now I want a new headphone!" then that should work.
 
The actual driver replacement is done purely from the front earpad side. In fact it's humorously easy to get the driver out. Just remove the ear pad, and there is a little plastic ring that holds the inner foam piece on. Pop that off with a spudger or flat head screw driver, and the driver just pops right out and is held on only by the 2 soldered wires. Pop them with a soldering iron and note polarity, pop them on the new driver with a tap of solder, and it's good as new.
 
Mar 8, 2017 at 6:12 AM Post #22 of 31
I know how to do this, I've already taken these headphones apart, how else would I check for hair on the diaphragm? Polarity is conveniently marked on the driver. The only problem was getting a new driver.
 
Beyerdynamic actually responded to my email today, they gave me the name of their distributor. I don't have anything from the distributor yet, but I did get a response to one of my emails I sent out to all shops I could think of, and one of them has these drivers. So it looks like I'll be able bo buy it in Poland after all. 
 
Mar 13, 2017 at 6:47 PM Post #23 of 31
I managed to buy the driver locally and replaced it. Problem solved.
 
A side note: these are the first headphones (apart from 40+ Pioneer quad headphones) I had with a driver problem (and I have quite a few headphones). My friend's DT770s had a bad driver as well. I also see that a number of people here on head-fi had similar problems. Are these Beyerdynamic drivers less reliable than average? 
 
Mar 14, 2017 at 12:32 PM Post #24 of 31
That hasn't been my experience. My first 2 good headphones were the DT880 and DT990 and between the two of them I have probably 500 hours of listening time. Other than my hair buzzing that one time which I fixed, no problems what so ever with driver quality. 
 
Mar 15, 2017 at 11:55 PM Post #26 of 31
That was a conservative estimate. It's more like 3 years of 16 hours a day, even slept with them on most nights before I got my HD650. To put it another way, I have more time on those 2 Beyerdynamics than any other headphone I own, and other than wearing out 6 sets of the velour pads, replacing the clicker in the 880, and a cosmetic crack from an over tightened screw on the 990, no issues. You know how it is when you only have 1 or 2 really good headphones, you basically live with them on.
 
Jan 24, 2023 at 5:32 PM Post #28 of 31
Bump.

My DT880s 600ohm seem to buzz quite a bit below 50hz in one or both drivers. When opening them up and looking at the worst one, the center of the driver does look to be pushed in a little (like you see tweeters in speakers in shops, but not quite as bad). They sound fine for most music, other than tracks with really deep sub bass. I do plenty of soldering at work and to me they look easy to replace. Can they only be bought by beyerdynamic at their prices?
 
Jan 24, 2023 at 9:12 PM Post #29 of 31
Bump.

My DT880s 600ohm seem to buzz quite a bit below 50hz in one or both drivers. When opening them up and looking at the worst one, the center of the driver does look to be pushed in a little (like you see tweeters in speakers in shops, but not quite as bad). They sound fine for most music, other than tracks with really deep sub bass. I do plenty of soldering at work and to me they look easy to replace. Can they only be bought by beyerdynamic at their prices?
I went through A LOT of Beyerdynamic headphones over the last few years and repaired many of them. The common problems that cause buzzing in the bass region are hair on the membrane (those can usually be removed), deformed coil (game over), unglued membrane (game over, at least for me, I haven't been able to properly glue it back in place), and deformed membrane, like in your case - if that is the cause of buzzing. It might not be, I've seen drivers with slightly deformed membranes that sounded fine so the reason could be something else. Also, I managed to repair less than half of the deformed membranes that were problematic (2 out of 3) by carefully applying negative pressure (with a straw) pushing, even pulling the membrane with a needle. You have to be extremely careful because it's very easy to do even more damage, especially that the membranes are covered with sticky coating. The 3 I could not repair - in one case I did exactly that, more damage. In one case I could not restore the proper shape. And I one I did, but the distortion persisted, probably the coil was deformed as well.

In short - you can try to repair it, but it's very risky and the chances of success are less than 50/50, even with a lot of practice.

And to answer your question: yes, you can only get new drivers from Beyerdynamic and their distributors at their prices, or sometimes second hand on auction sites. These drivers are actually made by Beyerdynamic, so it's not like you can buy a cheaper OEM version. I did experiment with using other drivers in Beyerdynamic headphones and actually had an OK result with drivers harvested from Philips headphones, but definitely not as good as original Beyerdynamic drivers. For DT880 you need drivers for this specific model (for DT770 and DT990 you can adapt drivers from other models, but not for DT880 - unless you manage to transplant the filter that's glued behind the magnet). And make sure you get the right impedance.
 
Jan 25, 2023 at 3:37 AM Post #30 of 31
I regularly had a rattle that was just a hair like object contacting the driver - but it wasn't my hair. That thick material covering the driver is awful in terms of how much fine threads it has in it. I also have 2 additional foam disks to reduce the treble spike and my hair hasn't gone through all this. I think the driver that is the worst must be effected somewhat in the low bass region by being misshapen. I managed to reduce the issue my using PVC tape and the back of a pensil to gently pull it back out, but I couldn't quite get it to how it originally was. It also has one or two creases so i don't think it ever will go back fully.

However, it does sound fine on all music at moderate volumes, and only suffers with really powerful and deep sub bass at pretty high volumes. When experimenting though, listening to below 10hz (not that you can hear that) but the left driver pops in and out pretty loudly regardless of the volume. I think it probably will be broken in some way, although it sounds simply fine for all music i listen to.

The price of drivers though... It is basically more than two thirds of the cost of the headphones in the UK for two of them.
 

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