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Major problems with my aftermarket HD800 cable - please help

post #1 of 4
12/31/10 at 10:22am
Thread Starter 

Hey all,

 

Recently I decided to give an aftermarket HD800 cable a try to see if I can notice any difference in sound from stock.  Out of interest of the vendor, they shall go nameless for now, but I can say that they're quite well known here on Head-fi (and to their credit they've been very attentive in dealing with the problem thus far)... so I just wanted to make it known that this is not supposed to be some cheap DIY cable or anything like that. 

 

Anyways, two weeks ago I received the cable.  With much anticipation, I hooked up the cable to my HD800 through my Stello -> WA6SE rig, and was VERY disappointed to find out that the left channel wasn't working at all!  I switched the L and R cable immediately to see if it is a connector problem, and to my relief it wasn't; when I switched the sides, the left channel worked while the right channel didn't.  And my stock HD800 cable also worked fine, and continues to work perfectly...

seeing all this suggested to me that this was a problem with my cable and not my headphones or rig, so I contacted the vendor back and he agreed to ship me a new cable almost right away.

 

So fast forward to today, I received my second cable in the mail. Thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong this time, I hooked up the new cables to my HD800... and to my dismay... EXACT same problem reoccured! No volume at all in the left channel.  Switching the L and R once again yielded the same results as last time; volume on the left but no volume on the right.

 

Here's the kicker: my amp is WA6SE which fortunately have two headphone jacks; one for high impedence headphones and one for low. I still had the old non-working cable with me, so out of curiousity I inserted the working right channel connector to the left side of my headphones and put it into the high impedence jack of my Woo. Then with my new cable, I inserted the working right channel to the right, put through to my low impedence jack.  And well... this time both channels worked, albeit with different volume levels due to impedence levels. And as stated before, the stock HD800 cable still works perfectly.

 

I'm going to contact the seller and ask for a refund, but I just wanted to know where the problem lies in this situation. Did the vendor use faulty batch of connectors for the left channel for the cables? or is there possibly some problem with the female connector for my HD800? I should let it be known that the HD800 connectors they used seem proprietary and not official Sennheiser connectors, and it is terminated with a neutrik 1/4 plug.

 

Thanks in advance.


Edited by K_19 - 12/31/10 at 10:30am
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post #2 of 4
12/31/10 at 10:49am

A couple things can cause the problems you are describing. Your cable mfr should have been able to crack this one, but expecting too much from a cable guy is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

If there were a problem with the female connectors on the actual headphones that would show up with the stock cable as well as the aftermarket one.

 

The most common problem can happen to either channel. The problem is that when the TRS plug is only partially inserted one of the channels drops out.

Are you sure the plug all the way in? I mean REALLY in. Can you perhaps try the headphone output on another amp? An old cheap reciever for example. If the jack is tight, or the plugs do not follow the 1/4" TRS spec to a close enough tolerance this may happen. Try it out. If you can look at the plug from the side (the Woo6se has a bit of a collar around the jack, but peek in there) are the plugs flush against the socket? The plug being unplugged by as little as 2mm can cause this issue.

 

After that, the other explanation is that the cables are not wired correctly. Despite the fact that there are only 7 or 8 solder joints to make a cable there is still room for error and like I said above its best not to set yourself up to be disappointed... Anyways, I doubt that 2 cables have the same problem, especially if one is to replace a "bad" one so this step is probably not necessary. 

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post #3 of 4
12/31/10 at 10:53am
Thread Starter 

Thanks for the assessment! I do own an alternate amp, the Gilmore Lite, which I actually haven't tried the new cable with as of yet (Due to it not being an ideal pair with HD800, compared to the WA6SE anyway). I'll give it a try later and report back. In regards to the jack being plugged all the way in, I did plug it in as far in as possible, and the cable suffer from the same problem in both jacks. Furthermore, my LCD-2, terminated with the same neutrik jack, doesn't have this problem at all.


Edited by K_19 - 12/31/10 at 11:06am
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post #4 of 4
1/6/11 at 11:39pm

Rule of thumb - if you jiggle a cable and that makes the sound cut in and out, this means the solder joint is not physically connected and that the wire is simply touching the solder joint.

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