Excellent. Aware as I was of purrin's findings I found this thread interesting. Your experiments have pretty much persuaded me this is worth trying.

Kudos.

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argo duck said:

Excellent. Aware as I was of purrin's findings I found this thread interesting. Your experiments have pretty much persuaded me this is worth trying.

Kudos.

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Try to use the thinnest (1/16") and with the highest wool content (mine is 95%) felt you can find.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/574842/beyerdynamic-tesla-t1-dampening-mod#post_7806077
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rhythmdevils said:

Very cool.  If I had a T1 I would do the same.  I was shocked to see a semi-open headphone without any damping whatsoever that sells for over 1k.  I have a hard time believing that empty chamber behind the driver was an engineering choice rather than just a lack of engineering.  You can try foam, and different felts, every felt has a different sound.  100% wool is said to be the best acoustically.  If you use felt that has no adhesive back you can hold it in place with some open cell foam.  Nice work!
 
It would be really cool to see measurements by Tyll or Purrin comparing it to stock... 

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I´m going to try this as well . And since I am in the EU, I´m getting the felt from Ebay.co.uk:
 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2mm-Hapla-Semi-Compressed-Pure-Wool-Chiropody-Felt-Self-Adhesive-22-5-x-45cm-1-/180757993250?_trksid=p5197.m1992&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D14%26meid%3D7822921343054236714%26pid%3D100015%26prg%3D1006%26rk%3D1%26sd%3D180757993250%26

I just now discovered this thread. I plan to try this mod, thanks guys.

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roskodan said:

just wanted to add, advise you, to start opening the coup from this little protuberance, tooth (red circle), that's why it's there, so you don't wear the plastic grips on the other sides!!!
 
and when you put it back, it goes last in, first the opposite side
 

 
another thing i noted is that some of the silky mesh grills of the coup between the driver and the ear (green) tend to vibrate when i tested the cans with a sine wave, 50 hz and lower, at very loud volume, louder than anyone could listen to, but i wanted to point that so you wouldn't mistake it for a driver failure, it sounds like brrrrr, grrrrr, srrrrrr, and if you lightly touch the grills it stops  

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You just described my audio issue. But I don't know if my problem is due to loose parts. Whatever the issue is, it is gone now. I didn't do nothing. Thanks for sharing!

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andrew_wot said:

I believe I hit the jackpot with this one.
So far I went through:
- Half circles felt 1/8" back, 1/16" front  (increased bass, added weight to mids, significantly tamed down the treble, but killed air, phones started sound more closed in in comparison to DT880)
- Full circle Extreme Dynamat (dried out the signature, increased details, still bright, gutless bass, sound too clinical)
- Full circle felt 1/16" (increased bass response, smoothed down treble spike (no more wincing on bright material), vocals sound more natural, still plenty of air and room around instruments, sondstage seems to be the same.
 
The last incarnation of the mod sounds so balanced, fixing excessive brightness and not affecting "good stuff" that I'll probably stop tinkering for now.

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Those who did the mod, if you don't mind to update the rest of the members of your progress and results.
We will appreciate it. This sounds very interesting even though I don't consider my Beyer T1 to be too bright
Au contraire, it sounds very balanced to me (I tend to prefer German's brighter sound).

Quote:

andrew_wot said:

I believe I hit the jackpot with this one.
So far I went through:
- Half circles felt 1/8" back, 1/16" front  (increased bass, added weight to mids, significantly tamed down the treble, but killed air, phones started sound more closed in in comparison to DT880)
- Full circle Extreme Dynamat (dried out the signature, increased details, still bright, gutless bass, sound too clinical)
- Full circle felt 1/16" (increased bass response, smoothed down treble spike (no more wincing on bright material), vocals sound more natural, still plenty of air and room around instruments, sondstage seems to be the same.
 
The last incarnation of the mod sounds so balanced, fixing excessive brightness and not affecting "good stuff" that I'll probably stop tinkering for now.

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I just ordered some of the 1/16 felt you had the best results with. I will post my findings next week after it arrives.
 
Thanks for the post!

Excellent jh. Look forward to your findings.

I plan to do the same - same felt as well - but could be 1-2 months before I get to this project.

I performed this mod last night, and it *may* have tamed the treble on some songs. To my ear, this was a minor change in sound and without having a 2nd pair of headphones to directly A/B, I would be hard pressed to tell you anything has changed with my T1.
 
I listened to my T1s for a good 3 hours last night after the mod, and every song I tried sounded really good, so I would say that the mod didn't negatively affect my headphones at all, and it probably helped some (I would really need a 2nd pair of T1s to verify though). I used 1/16" felt that Andrew_WOT had recommended above.

^ Doing a before/after A/B is difficult. It's not exactly easy to reverse and double-check. I'm currently in the middle of a Schiit Bifrost pre-uber/post-uber test, and using 2-3 other DACs to establish a baseline to help identify any pre/post differences. This might or might not work!

Thanks for the report.

I also did the mod last night! I used the felt from ebay.co.uk suggested by Calypso, perhaps a little bit thicker than 1/16" at 2 mm. I used a full circle with 25 mm inner diameter and 64 mm outer diameter.
 
The mod was very easy to do, but I was momentarily confused because the drivers didn't come loose so easily after I had removed the plastic rings keeping them in place. I kept looking around for something else that I needed to push or pull, and after ten minutes of wondering if I had missed a step, they came loose and after that I had no problem. Attaching the felt and closing up the headphones again probably took less than a minute.
 
The result is very good, exactly as I hoped, with the treble tamed, the mids warmer, and the bass lifted just a little bit (perhaps all placebo! ). I've had the AKG K702 65th Anniversaries before (among other headphones) and this mod brings the T1 a little bit in that direction sound signature-wise. It makes bright recordings much easier on the ear, but probably sacrifices a tiny bit of air - a very acceptable trade-off since probably 95 % of my music collection sounds better.
 
I believe I got a very obvious change, and improvement, with this mod, but I've felt all along that my T1s sounded a just little bit bright, having had the HE500 and K702 65th Anniversaries just before.

Knowing there is, or was, some variance between T1s means different starting points. The mod will change some phones more than others.

Or maybe the difference is how well the unmodded T1s fit to our individual hearing preferences?

Must admit the only time I had a problem with anything like untamed brightness was when I happened to have the t1 playing much louder than my usual level. I would guess this would've been around 84dBA (pink noise) had I bothered to measure. I might not be a good candidate for this mod...

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jh7000 said:

I performed this mod last night, and it *may* have tamed the treble on some songs. To my ear, this was a minor change in sound and without having a 2nd pair of headphones to directly A/B, I would be hard pressed to tell you anything has changed with my T1.
 
I listened to my T1s for a good 3 hours last night after the mod, and every song I tried sounded really good, so I would say that the mod didn't negatively affect my headphones at all, and it probably helped some (I would really need a 2nd pair of T1s to verify though). I used 1/16" felt that Andrew_WOT had recommended above.

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I completely understand, it is hard to reliably gauge the changes like that w/o using a second pair (which on the other hand can sound slightly different to begin with).
What worked for me is using my DT880 600 Ohm as a reference and the same album/tracks that I've found unbearably trebly (for me) with stock T1 but perfectly acceptable with DT880.
Another measure was a long time listening induced fatigue, I can now take much longer with modded T1 than could ever with stock.
Thicker felt impact on signature was more noticeable (more warmth and bass), but it killed the soundstage and air, to my ears thin felt was the best median.

After listening to music with the dampened T1s now for a couple of days I'm starting to think that the full circle may be a little bit too much - as has been reported before. I definitely got a smooth sound out of my T1s, but also lost some of its great airiness and soundstage. It's great to know, though, that it's possible to experiment with different amounts of felt and get very different results. With a little bit of patience it should be possible to find just the right balance for my headphones and amp (SA-31).

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utopia said:

After listening to music with the dampened T1s now for a couple of days I'm starting to think that the full circle may be a little bit too much - as has been reported before. I definitely got a smooth sound out of my T1s, but also lost some of its great airiness and soundstage. It's great to know, though, that it's possible to experiment with different amounts of felt and get very different results. With a little bit of patience it should be possible to find just the right balance for my headphones and amp (SA-31).I

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I am not sure if anyone tried it yet but as you've found it too warm even with the thinnest felt you can find, may be self adhesive 2mm creatology foam would work better, just an idea as this is what Anaxilus mod is using for HD800, in v2 they also throw rug liner on the top, another thing to think about if foam is still too much.