On eBay last week, I happened upon a pair of potentially cheap Floats. After being burned by some git who managed to win some Ergo 2s that I was bidding on a week previous, I thought I'd try my luck this time around.
I won the auction for the sum total of £7.75 delivered to my door.
They were being sold by some bloke who was clearing out his recently deceased brother's gear and stated that the foams were partially disintegrated, and somewhat manky. Upon arrival, they were indeed manky. Very, very manky. They reeked of cigarette smoke, were generally grimy and had more fluff, dust and other cack on than is natural for anything, let alone a pair of headphones. They left a weird, sticky and unclean feeling whenever they were handled which affected somewhat OCD levels of hand washing. They also had a dead connection or three at the connector, but seemed to work with the connector held in precisely just the right position.
So back off to eBay I went, and ordered some speaker grill cloth and a new 1/4" jack.
I stripped the headphones to their component parts, cleaned them all over with methylated spirit, cleaned the drivers (lots or hair - bleurgh), bathed the metal grills in paint stripper to remove glue residue (and that awful sticky crud), then left all the plastic parts to soak in a bowl of water detergent over night. After drying everything, all the bits were decidedly clean and no longer stank.
I spent a couple of hours reassembling them this evening, fitting new grill covers and foams. The end result is this:
What do I think?
Well, they're very comfy and they look awesome.
How do they sound? Best described as a bit like a big old pair of good quality speakers from about 1985. Fantastic soundstage, nice mid range, but have a tendency to get a bit muddy at the bottom end and seem to fall over themselves in complex bassy passages. Very laid back, which is rather nice - good for a bit of relaxed late night listening. They definitely benefit from being cranked up too, where everything becomes a bit less mangled and wooly, but warm and well, better defined.
For a total of ~£17 I think they're a bit of a steal.
Now to find some Model Twos or Ergo 2s...
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