MDR30
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2009
- Posts
- 1,001
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- 212
Let me introduce a sweet sounding, balanced and universal headphone.
A few months ago I bought a DT250 (€12) with a broken yoke to use for spare parts for my regular pair. It turned out everything else was in working condition. The cable came in handy for my DT48, but what to do with the drivers? Much later I remembered that I had a pair of old non-working DT880 lying around somewhere. A bad deal from German e-bay – the DT880 and two portable CD-players for €45, nothing working. Someone had poked inside the cups, ruining the drivers that probably were burned out. Would the DT250 drivers fit? There was only one way to find out…
As I’ve never opened a pair of DT250 before, and haven’t seen it dismantled, I carefully unscrewed the baffles. The drivers looked similar to the DT880s for sure, I just had to figure out how to remove them.
Wasn’t so hard. First I unsoldered the cables, then removed the soft glue locking the driver:
I turned the driver anti clockwise a few millimeters:
Voilà:
As you can see the drivers are similar, close to identical. The DT880:
The DT250:
Same size and same diaphragm. The old DT880 drivers were probably 600 ohms, the DT250 drivers are 80 ohms. There’s also a difference in the shape of the holes in the driver frame, but that probably doesn’t affect the sound much. [Edit Aug 2011: it does, it's a 100-200 Hz bass increase with the DT250 drivers.] The diaphragm has a slightly sticky feeling, with the typically structured surface.
I had to remove the three pegs on the circumference of the drivers however, as the old DT880 drivers were just squeezed and locked in place. No problem with a small, sharp file. When securely in place, I fixed the drivers to the baffle with three dabs of hot glue:
I wanted a straight, not coiled cord, so took a 3,5 mm interconnect cable from Thomann (€2.50) and cut it to the preferred length. The hardest part of the modification was to force the somewhat too large diameter cable through the rubber collars in the cup. Some lubrication did the trick. Different sizes of hot shrinking tubes were used to fit the cable in the cable lock of the cup and finally to the driver terminations. Then the baffles clicked into place, with pads from an old Philips headphone.
The first version DT880 is very simple – a few plastic parts, a soft headband, decorative but fragile aluminum grilles, thin paper on the inside of the cups and a piece of felt covering the outside of the baffles. The yoke's joint to the headband often cracks on the old DT880, as it had on my pair, but some super glue gel (clamped over night) seems to work:
Cheap and plastic it may look, but the sounding results are stunning. Much work must have been put into the construction and tuning. I guess the felt in front of the driver dampens high frequency resonances and makes for a smooth treble (I wonder if this is a special wool blend), resulting in a distinct and transparent sound throughout the whole spectrum:
I don’t think Beyer exaggerated when they claimed to have created “electrostatic” reproduction from a dynamic headphone in 1980. I mean the driver is still produced basically unaltered to this very day!
I haven’t been able to compare my 80 ohm DT880 to the latest 600 ohm version, but these old, light, properly burnt in and comfortable cans are more than satisfying. In fact they sound great.
(3,5 mm plug with 1/4 adapter)
Listening from Clip+, D2+, Technics portable CD-player, Millennium HP1 headphone
amp, music from baroque and classical/romantic/modern to 1950s/1960s jazz, Sinatra, Burt Bacharach, Steely Dan, Zappa, Eno, rock, Jaga Jazzist, easy listening etc.
A few months ago I bought a DT250 (€12) with a broken yoke to use for spare parts for my regular pair. It turned out everything else was in working condition. The cable came in handy for my DT48, but what to do with the drivers? Much later I remembered that I had a pair of old non-working DT880 lying around somewhere. A bad deal from German e-bay – the DT880 and two portable CD-players for €45, nothing working. Someone had poked inside the cups, ruining the drivers that probably were burned out. Would the DT250 drivers fit? There was only one way to find out…
As I’ve never opened a pair of DT250 before, and haven’t seen it dismantled, I carefully unscrewed the baffles. The drivers looked similar to the DT880s for sure, I just had to figure out how to remove them.
Wasn’t so hard. First I unsoldered the cables, then removed the soft glue locking the driver:
I turned the driver anti clockwise a few millimeters:
Voilà:
As you can see the drivers are similar, close to identical. The DT880:
The DT250:
Same size and same diaphragm. The old DT880 drivers were probably 600 ohms, the DT250 drivers are 80 ohms. There’s also a difference in the shape of the holes in the driver frame, but that probably doesn’t affect the sound much. [Edit Aug 2011: it does, it's a 100-200 Hz bass increase with the DT250 drivers.] The diaphragm has a slightly sticky feeling, with the typically structured surface.
I had to remove the three pegs on the circumference of the drivers however, as the old DT880 drivers were just squeezed and locked in place. No problem with a small, sharp file. When securely in place, I fixed the drivers to the baffle with three dabs of hot glue:
I wanted a straight, not coiled cord, so took a 3,5 mm interconnect cable from Thomann (€2.50) and cut it to the preferred length. The hardest part of the modification was to force the somewhat too large diameter cable through the rubber collars in the cup. Some lubrication did the trick. Different sizes of hot shrinking tubes were used to fit the cable in the cable lock of the cup and finally to the driver terminations. Then the baffles clicked into place, with pads from an old Philips headphone.
The first version DT880 is very simple – a few plastic parts, a soft headband, decorative but fragile aluminum grilles, thin paper on the inside of the cups and a piece of felt covering the outside of the baffles. The yoke's joint to the headband often cracks on the old DT880, as it had on my pair, but some super glue gel (clamped over night) seems to work:
Cheap and plastic it may look, but the sounding results are stunning. Much work must have been put into the construction and tuning. I guess the felt in front of the driver dampens high frequency resonances and makes for a smooth treble (I wonder if this is a special wool blend), resulting in a distinct and transparent sound throughout the whole spectrum:
I don’t think Beyer exaggerated when they claimed to have created “electrostatic” reproduction from a dynamic headphone in 1980. I mean the driver is still produced basically unaltered to this very day!
I haven’t been able to compare my 80 ohm DT880 to the latest 600 ohm version, but these old, light, properly burnt in and comfortable cans are more than satisfying. In fact they sound great.
(3,5 mm plug with 1/4 adapter)
Listening from Clip+, D2+, Technics portable CD-player, Millennium HP1 headphone
amp, music from baroque and classical/romantic/modern to 1950s/1960s jazz, Sinatra, Burt Bacharach, Steely Dan, Zappa, Eno, rock, Jaga Jazzist, easy listening etc.
