Modified Sony MDR-ZX100

So a couple days ago I came home from Walmart with these: the Sony MDR-ZX100. And for $20 I was impressed with the overall sound quality (after I took the fabric off that was covering the drivers of course). The highs and mids were good for the price after about 15 hours of burn-in, and were definitely the focus of the headphones. The bass, however, was almost nonexistent. This suprised me because I had ever heard a bass light headphone before. So the few days before I bought these headphones I had been reading up on some Denon headphone modifications. And when I got these, I remembered what they looked like and thought, "Why can't I do that on these? It seems easy enough." A few days later, I am holding my newly modified Sony headphonew, and man do they sound better! So here are the modifications that I made on the headphones. I encourage anyone who owns these to try it out!

In this picture are the first two modifications to the headphones. The obvious one is the piece of plastic glued onto the very center of the grill covering the driver. This improved mid and treble clarity and really brought out the details in the vocals. The other one is the piece of electical tape over the hole next to the cable. This greatly improved the bass volume and range and gave the music the warmth thay it requires. If I were to cover the hole next to it as well, the bass would really be booming!  

Now for the internal mods. Pictured here is a simple soda can bottom, cut to fit in the bottom of the "can" part of the headphones. This improved pretty much everything: overall clarity, soundstage, instrument seperation, etc. The last thing I did was cut out a couple circles of cardboard and glued them to the top of the bottom of the can (haha). And the outcome was this:

Because of the cardboard spacers, there was increased space between the housing and the disc that holds the driver (the space in the picture is exaggerated to make it easier to see). Now the headphones sound more like open cans and have a lot of soundstage. Great for gaming!

So after a lot of trial and error, listening to the same songs over and over again, and time, you now have a pair of headphones that sound like they're worth much more than what you paid for them. Have fun modifying!