Hi everyone, I was hesitant to post my mods since everyone else's headphones looks better. Here is mine. This picture was taken by Brian from BTG Audio and you can see it in his product website. My headset started out as a really beat up pair of SR 225is on Ebay which I probably went overboard with on bidding. I thought I was getting a bargain because the guy selling it didn't know how to take good pics -- well it was blurred because it was beat to hell! But they sounded great so I kept them. A year later the driver went bad and I went ahead with cable replacements thinking that was the problem. A couple of hundred bucks later this is what I got and it is outperforming my stock SR 325is in some cases.
Here are my mods:
Stock plastic Grado SR 225i cups, button removed, lettering sanded, painted and clear coated in copper
shaved side pins
Gretsch chrome steel electric guitar switch tips for the rod ends
8-strand clear, braided Mogami cable with a Viablue jack from BTG Audio (thanks Brian)
Black Manta cowhide headband (thanks Jin)
Symphones Magnum X drivers
I recently switched to some nice Paduak cups I got of Ebay and I replaced the pins with hex screws. I can't decide which is better looking. The only difference in sound signature seems to be a slight overall increase in volume for the Paduak/Narra cups. My stock 325is beats it for volume and bass quantity. For everything else, particularly detail and instrument separation, this headset wins -- plastic or wood cups.
If someone were to build this thing outright without my pitfalls, and without the purely cosmetic mods, they would have a set that could go toe to toe (and win in some areas) with a 325i for the price of a 225i.