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Sony MDR-XB500 Superficial Mods

post #1 of 5
11/27/11 at 7:10pm
Thread Starter 

Hey guys, as you can see I'm new here, and I'm not really an audiophile. I currently have the Sony PiiQ GiiQ. For Christmas I'm going to have around $50 or so and I'm planning on buying some MDR-XB500's as they're affordable and have generally good reviews. And they actually look pretty good! But, I was wondering how hard it would be to paint the headphones to nearly all white with Krylon Fusion, and get some neon/lime green cable covers. By cable covers, I mean the shoelace looking fabric that you can put on the cables. I do not plan on rewiring ANYTHING, so in this whole process, I was wondering if it's just unscrew paint, slip on covers. How much would it cost to get the covers, or could I try to find it in fabric stores? Also, as most of you are aware the MDR-XB500 has a flat cable, so would it be possible to just get a shoelace, cut the tips, slip it on, and slide the ends under the ports? Ghetto, I know, but I'm on a limited budget, and need the easiest solution possible. 
 

New Thought: Could I just buy some colored heatshrink tubing, cut it to length, and use a heat-gun/blow-dryer and shrink it to size? I just want the simplest way.

 

Thanks!

Tim


Edited by Tim747 - 11/27/11 at 7:29pm
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post #2 of 5
11/27/11 at 7:31pm

Welcome to Head-Fi.

 

I like your ideas. I never thought of using a shoestring, that could work.  As for painting, you would only be able to paint the silver part and half way up the headband, not the black part on top of the headband because it's pleather. you could pull off the pleather part but it's a wrap-around piece that contains the thin padding for the head. You could pull it off, paint and then add some padding like a weather stripping self adhered dense foam.

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post #3 of 5
11/27/11 at 7:42pm

Heatshrink would be really stiff. You can have a combination of both my having the lace/sleeve covering the cables and using a small piece of heatshrink at the end of the sleeve and shrink it there to keep the sleeving in place. 

As for the paint, you're going t have to find a way to take apart the whole entire headphone and paint it from there. For the headband you probably don't want to risk damage to it so just cover that up with tape. If you can't take apart the headphones, then covering all the areas with tape would do, but I don't think the outcome would look as nice or very nice depending on how well you paint it.

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post #4 of 5
11/27/11 at 8:27pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the advice guys! I will probably buy some skinny green shoelaces and heatshrink the ends like iJustin said. Now that I'm looking at the details, I will probably go for a more "stealth" look with green accents. I plan on painting only the silver cups and the silver circle hinge part black and put a green Scion xB (My car and it stands for xtra bass in XB500) logo or some other logo on the hinge circle portion. Any other advice guys? Anybody with the XB500's have any methods to remove/mask the silver cup area for painting?
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post #5 of 5
3/27/12 at 11:59am

seems like a nice idea you got there.

 

but you WILL have to tape as much as you can, and never get any paint on the Pads, headband, etc as these are cloth materials, and Spraypaint NEVER likes to cope well with flexible materials.

 

and the fact that you're going to match it with your Scion XB. makes it even awesomer.

 

Scion XB's are awesome!

you should find some trademark accent's for the number 500 in chrome, and put it all next to the XB trademarks of your Scion

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