nickchen
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2005
- Posts
- 4,395
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- 44
I have tried a lot of stuff in the recent years, but nevertheless I was really impressed by the PK1's abilities. I love their emotional sound signature, the details, the punch and the sweeet mids - almost a small Gradessandro.
Fit was an issue though, they slipped or even dropped out of my ears from the slightest physical influences. My buddy NoXter got the idea to convert them into clipons (kind of), great idea, so I proceeded, team tinker again.
Basis was 2 lines of braided solid copper wire taken from obsolete house electricity cables with a final "coating" out of heat shrink tube. The buds got semi-fixed with some soldered thinner wire. Copper wires and thin wire got soldered together before applying the shrink stuff.
Soldering was tricky as I did not want to grill buds or cable, so I made a temporary protective thingway for the soldering phase and pushed the wire loop in place later. Needed several attempts to get the perfect wire loop diameter that was wide enough to be pushed over the thicker lower end of the bud, but still provided sufficient fixation. The surface of the buds got scratched a bit, but I don't care, they are ugly bastards anyway. Final step was careful compression of the "loop-in-place" by means of a gripper.
The semi-moveabilty is important IMO, the buds can still be moved/leaned ~5mm in vertical direction, but don't move much sideways or clockwise.
It took me approx. 15min to bend the wire towards a rough fitting which provided good sound (a mirror helped), but almost 2 more days of slight fiddling here and there to get rid of remaining pressure marks and other discomfort issues. Perfect now. I can wear them for hours nonstop, and I bet I could utilize them even for jogging or downhill biking.
I originally regarded that solution as provisorical and intended to build something more solid later, but things turned out to be much more practical and robust than expected, so I propably keep it unaltered.
Fit was an issue though, they slipped or even dropped out of my ears from the slightest physical influences. My buddy NoXter got the idea to convert them into clipons (kind of), great idea, so I proceeded, team tinker again.
Basis was 2 lines of braided solid copper wire taken from obsolete house electricity cables with a final "coating" out of heat shrink tube. The buds got semi-fixed with some soldered thinner wire. Copper wires and thin wire got soldered together before applying the shrink stuff.
Soldering was tricky as I did not want to grill buds or cable, so I made a temporary protective thingway for the soldering phase and pushed the wire loop in place later. Needed several attempts to get the perfect wire loop diameter that was wide enough to be pushed over the thicker lower end of the bud, but still provided sufficient fixation. The surface of the buds got scratched a bit, but I don't care, they are ugly bastards anyway. Final step was careful compression of the "loop-in-place" by means of a gripper.
The semi-moveabilty is important IMO, the buds can still be moved/leaned ~5mm in vertical direction, but don't move much sideways or clockwise.
It took me approx. 15min to bend the wire towards a rough fitting which provided good sound (a mirror helped), but almost 2 more days of slight fiddling here and there to get rid of remaining pressure marks and other discomfort issues. Perfect now. I can wear them for hours nonstop, and I bet I could utilize them even for jogging or downhill biking.
I originally regarded that solution as provisorical and intended to build something more solid later, but things turned out to be much more practical and robust than expected, so I propably keep it unaltered.
