[swt61]

If one admittedly half dense woodworker can take a headphone from a giant conglomerate like Yamaha, re-house the driver with 60% blind luck, 10% common sense and 30% good advice from you guys, and end up with a headphone that rocks my world, just imagine what a dedicated company with real resources could create.
I just don't understand why Ortho/Isodynamics have been virtually ignored.

 

[spritzer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swt61 /img/forum/go_quote.gif If one admittedly half dense woodworker can take a headphone from a giant conglomerate like Yamaha, re-house the driver with 60% blind luck, 10% common sense and 30% good advice from you guys, and end up with a headphone that rocks my world, just imagine what a dedicated company with real resources could create. I just don't understand why Ortho/Isodynamics have been virtually ignored.

Stax was largely ignored here for years and the old models were considered horrible...

The problem is the "good enough" mentality of most manufacturers. Plastic is cheap and easy to mold so it must be good enough as a housing material. It's the same with cables.

 

[AudioCats]

If Yamaha were to reproduce the YH-1 or Fostex to make the old large diaphragm T50 again, today, how much will the street price tag be? I imagine the YH-1 will go for over $200 and T-50 around $300. Then they will have to fight against existing dynamics such as HD600, DT990, K701. Very tough competition.

 

[wualta]

Compare and contrast. It's not visible in the photos, but the only gasket or seal is a narrow strip of black sticky stuff coated on the back of the baffle where the edge of the driver fits into it. That's it.


The back vent is [lightly] damped by a thin nonwoven black fabric glued to the inside of the steel screen, and so is the front, presumably to keep iron filings and such out of the magnets, as was the practice with the old RCA ribbon microphones.

.

 

[spritzer]

No wonder they sound similar to the SR-X Mk3... the fiberglass backing is the same...

 

[wualta]

No surprise there. We've seen this stuff show up in several old 'phones by Fostex and Stax and even Audio-Technica.

I haven't tested it, but it appears to be some sort of cellulose. It certainly doesn't feel like fiberglass.

Is this what Stax used in the SR-Lambda and Lambda Pro?

 

[spritzer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wualta /img/forum/go_quote.gif No surprise there. We've seen this stuff show up in several old 'phones by Fostex and Stax and even Audio-Technica. I haven't tested it, but it appears to be some sort of cellulose. It certainly doesn't feel like fiberglass. Is this what Stax used in the SR-Lambda and Lambda Pro?

It's pretty similar to an old insulation material manufactured here locally that I've come across but it is synthetic. I just call it fiberglass for the sake of simplicity.

It's used in all of the vintage Stax phones, either sown like in the T50 (SR-X, SR-1,3,5) or in thick sheets (Sigmas) or a thin layer (3mm) in the SR-Lambda and Lambda Pro.

 

[wualta]

Well, let us know how your T50 sounds. You might even try giving it some gaskets.

 

[AudioCats]

ok, who got that T50? Birgir?

The price was soooooo low....

The seller must be pissed now. What is up with ebay nowadays, HP-3's went for $50 but T50's for less than $120?

.

 

[unbiased]

I find it amazing that there is a thread on these old Yamaha Ortho-Dynamic headphones from the 1970's. This thead caused me to go digging into my old junk pile(s) for the HP-2 set I remember buying back in the late 1970's and hardly ever used. I found it now and it sounds great! Highs and midrange do have an electrostatic sense to them. Amazing for 30+ years old headphones. But I have the problem of the broken thin plastic tensioning bands on the cloth headband... does anybody have a good recommended fix for this? I would love to get this headband fixedx and be able to use it today... it is a very good sounding headphone set. Not too much deep bass, but the mids and highs are nice. This thread is so long, I did not even get to read through it all... so I don't know if anyone has addressed how to fix the head band (thin deteriorated broken plastic bands) part of them.

 

[JadeEast]

The t-50 I didn't win. I would have loved to have gotten my hands on "the best ortho ever" and put them up against the pro-30.

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by unbiased /img/forum/go_quote.gif But I have the problem of the broken thin plastic tensioning bands on the cloth headband... does anybody have a good recommended fix for this? I would love to get this headband fixedx and be able to use it today...

Basically, you replace it with a leather strap.

We all wish there were another way, but that's it.

 

[wualta]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JadeEast I would have loved to have gotten my hands on "the best ortho ever" and put them up against the pro-30.

And right now I'm chasing the T50 with my old #1 Pro 30, tearing it down and building it back up a different way with different felt densities (tip o' th' tam to ericj for the gift of some dense felt) and different methods of vent damping.

Vent damping is for the bottom two and a half octaves what the reflex dot is for the top one and a half. What I need to find is something thin and more porous than cheap felt.

[thinks] Hmm.. I wonder if a silk tie is dense enough...

.

 

[wualta]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ericj /img/forum/go_quote.gif Basically, you replace it with a leather strap. We all wish there were another way, but that's it.

Couldn't he simply break off the existing plastic strips? I've always wondered if they were really necessary. Then what you'd have left is.. well, a leather strap. It would flop down and be less easy to put on, but as it is, most of the load is borne by the plastic strips and the leather's just there for looks. At least that's how it looks to me. Any thoughts?

unbiased, glad to have you with us. The cracked plastic strip in the headband is fairly common and another weak spot of the design, but normally it doesn't get in the way. Is your leather intact?

I've used temporary fixes for cracked plastic strips like blobs of hot glue, but if we brainstorm I'll bet we can come up with something.

You could use cloth as a strap. You could use a wide plastic strip, as Audio-Technica did in the ATH-2. Some 20 gauge copper wire. Microfiber suede.

We may have a fix for your weak bass, so stick around.

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wualta /img/forum/go_quote.gif Couldn't he simply break off the existing plastic strips? I've always wondered if they were really necessary. Then what you'd have left is.. well, a leather strap. It would flop down and be less easy to put on, but as it is, most of the load is borne by the plastic strips and the leather's just there for looks. At least that's how it looks to me. Any thoughts?

True, it would just be a floppy leather-like strap. Like i have on my oldschool DT990 and DT880-S.

The tricky part then would be removing the plastic without tearing the, well, whatever it is. I mean it might be leather, but i doubt it.

That i haven't tried.

I did try crimping a fold of thin aluminum sheet over the crack in my YH-2 headband, and that basically worked, but was always catching my hair.

You could do the same with thin polycarbonate (read as: cuttings from a retail blisterpack) backed with uberdoubletape, maybe, but that might still catch hairs pretty easily.

As far as i know, there's no non-laminar way of fixing them. At least not that i can think of. Not long term anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wualta [thinks] Hmm.. I wonder if a silk tie is dense enough...

Funny you should mention that.

I was repotting my working YH-2 into a UR40 today (or rather, the UR40's non-folding radioshack brother) and for some reason decided to touch up the YH-2 baffles while i was at it.

These were the baffles that i soaked in alcohol for several hours so i could peel off the 'gasket' and replace the fabric.

The first thing i'd tried there was silk from a tie. It was reasonably transparent but the problem with the stuff in that position is that it can't be tensioned the way grille fabric should be.

Plus I'd used a flexible urethane glue, which wasn't really working out. That was before i bought the uberdoubletape.

Re-did 'em in stretchy nylon. Also cut doubletape for the baffle faces with gaps around the screws.

Why'd I do all this? I have no idea. Maybe when i finally get fed up with the YH-2 design I'll put it all back together and sell them on ebay for a king's ransom.

The UR40 fosterfone -- that's with a bluetak gasket between driver and baffle, bluetak over the ring of holes in the baffle, low-density felt over the back of the driver, paper reflex dot in the center of the driver (and now I'm thinking it should have been off-center), fishfoam instead of the original damping foam, and another layer of low-density felt over the back grille.

Oh, and I've peeled all the vinyl off the pads, so they're just terry cloth.

The sound? even, bass is there but a little rolled off.

So now I'm wondering, when i go back in, do i add another layer of felt over the back of the driver, or use higher density felt over the back grille, or what.