[takato14]

I need to re-fabricate earpads for an old vintage headphone on which the earpads and headband are worn-out. 
 
I had been looking at some vinyl/pleather but I've heard that pleather doesn't breathe very well. Maximum comfort is the goal here, because the headphones are painfully uncomfortable as-is.

 

[takato14]

'le bump.

 

[GREQ]

Be careful when changing the original earpads as different materials will change the sound of the headphone, often quite dramatically.
 
Pleather earpads tend to keep the vacuum of air allowing for a more powerful bass response with more 'slam'.
Velour/foam will allow the air to circulate somewhat (therefore also more comfortable) and will give a more 'airy' sound with less bass. This can also improve separation/detail and soundstage. 

 

[takato14]

The headphones are infamous for sounding like garbage anyways, so I'm not too concerned about it. As far as I know the original material was pleather, it's deteriorated pretty bad on the set I have so it's hard to tell.
 
For reference, I'm restoring a Pioneer SE-500. 

 

[biggbenn74]

Quote:

The headphones are infamous for sounding like garbage anyways, so I'm not too concerned about it. As far as I know the original material was pleather, it's deteriorated pretty bad on the set I have so it's hard to tell.
 
For reference, I'm restoring a Pioneer SE-500. 

OMG. Please let me know how your restoration goes and what you did. I am very interested in doing the same thing to the SE-500. But I'd recommend a material that is like pleather, because the originals were like that to begin with, right? Anyway, if you want more comfort though, get some velour pads. If I end up getting the SE-500, I'd want to make the earpads over ear, not on ear. 

 

[takato14]

The way the SE-500 is designed makes it pretty much impossible to make them into over ears without making them look stupid, lol. Though, I haven't actually tried, so I'll play around with pad sizes and shapes.
 
And don't worry, I'm making a worklog. Once I receive the pleather I ordered I'll get the thread up and running :3

 

[spamtoaster]

I am from the future asking: Do you have any results on that? If you can post some photos It would be nice.