[Alucard]

How will the sound change if I just use the cotton and no bluetac? Right now I have covered all of the big area behind the drivers with the tac, not the sides. Maybe I'll try to experiment a little.

 

[KT88]

Try experimenting. I tried about 7 timer before reaching the wanted results.

 

[Alucard]

I've heard that several people have had problems with getting the pads back on. It must only be the regular a900 then because on my ltd there wasn't any problems at all.

 

[Superfrag]

Major thread bump... hoping for pics if possible!

 

[fluse]

pls, does anybody still have the pictures for the mod?

 

[mencargo]

I'm about to purchase some A1000 pads for my A900, and I would like to do this mod as well, would someone have the pics?
These are the only A1000 pads I could find, is there any other store with these pads?

 

[darkswordsman17]

Something else to try is to toss the foam ring and plug one or both of the side "ports". In my experience, Audio-Technica drivers rely on the cups to add some reverb for their bass, and I feel damping the cups with tak actually harms the sound as it blocks this. To tune the bass more you can put cotton around the outer frame "vents". You can do that and/or plugging the ports.
 
If you want to adjust the mids you can play with damping the little hole on the backside of the driver. You'll have to open the internal housing to access that.
 
I can try to make some diagram-pics, but I'll probably have to be reminded. I don't have A900s (A700 frame with W5000 drivers and, right now Denon D2000 cups and D5000 cable) though so I'd appreciate if someone could get pics of the driver and stock internals to be more exact.
 
As for the earpads, I'm not sure. Bluetin might have some, but you should contact Audio-Technica directly, they had decent prices for replacement parts and were quick in shipping in the US. Just e-mail their customer support and ask for prices of the pads and they'll tell you how to pay. They even take Paypal. I'm not sure what the A1000 pads are made of so you might consider the A900Ti pads as well. They are synthetic leather but are pretty comfy (cushy is how I'd describe them). There was someone that was going to buy the W5000 pads and put them on A700s (it and the A900 are the same for the frame and earpad parts). They're very nice but expensive, and I don't know that everyone will like their fit as they rest on the ears a bit.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Ok, found out that I still had a pic of the inside of a W5000 I modded, so keep in mind it won't look exactly the same as the inside of an A900, but it will work for people wanting pictures for what to do.
 

 
Ok, I put green squares around the "ports" as I call them, as you can see I plugged one with some tak. This will impact the bass and I'd recommend trying this first as its the easiest and will let you know if its what you want.
 
The blue are the "vents" (on the W5000 they're a sort of plastic mesh, while on the the ones below that its just been some white paper type material), blocking these does the same thing. You would pull apart cotton balls and place it around. Some people just put the tak on the inside of the earcups and then put the cotton there, but I don't really recommend it, although if you want to lessen bass output you'd just fill the cups with a bunch of cotton.
 
As you can see, I removed the internal housing as well (all the A-T closed cans have the same black plastic internal part). On this one I actually put the retainer from some AD700s to hold the driver in place, although I've been using tak on my current pair. Because you'll either have resolder the wire or break the housing, this is not really a "reversible" mod like the rest. Also, if you look closely you can see that the bare wire of the driver coil is exposed, so it might be another reason to leave the internal housing in as it provides a bit of extra protection.
 
The last thing is the center foam piece on the back of the driver It is the orange square in the middle. I don't know if its there on the A900 (to be honest, I don't know if the "hole" is even there, although I seem to remember it being there when I owned the A900s, the A700s do not have it though, but the AD700s do), so don't freak out if its not there. What you do is you get some foam or cotton and fill the hole with it. The denser it is, the more midrange push you get. I prefer a bit less than the stock foam on the W5000, as too much or none skews it to both directions too much.
 
Oh, and one last note, you should have a large foam or cotton (in the case of W1000 and W5000) ring around the internal housing. The mods I've described is with that removed. With it removed the bass quantity goes up, but it gets flabby and overbearing. The W5000 is bass light, which is why it doesn't take much to get it to a nice place. You might want to block both ports and/or some combination of blocking the vents. I personally do not recommend putting tak on the back of the cups as it really kills the bass and removes the reverb which sounds unnatural to me.

 

[VioletConqueror]

So I decided to take this afternoon to mod my a700's. Unfortunately Tyson's original pictures have disappeared and darkswordsman17's pictures could use some expansion (no offense, I used mostly your ideas to mod my own). I listen to all kinds of music, unfortunately with this mod Dubstep/Psytrance are at odds with Power Metal since there is something of a trade off of mids to bass. I think I found a happy medium and I'm really digging the new sound, I can finally listen to Blind Guardian now!

Alright, enough babble, PICS!

To get the pad off simply slip your fingers under the inside of the pad and push out and up, very simple:


The front panel has four screws holding it on, a small phillips will do the trick:


This is a rear view of the front plate:


The driver housing is held on by three screws, unscrew them and carefully pull back the housing making sure not to pull too hard on the wires, they don't look too sturdy:


The a700's drivers don't have the hole in the back as mentioned by darkswordsman17, instead there are four small holes. What I ended up doing was plugging two of the holes with blutac and plugging one of the vents mentioned by darkswordsman17:


I unfortunately only have two hands so no pics of the pads going back on. I basically started at the portion nearest the headband and worked my way down. Make sure to align the pad correctly (one part is fatter than the other) to make your life easier. Then simply run your fingers along the underside of the pad and pull the flap out and over the rim. Patience is your friend, and when its all on give it a bit of a twist to set everything.

Finally keep in mind this is the left side, the right side is even simpler since you don't have to deal with the cable, just be sure not to tug on anything too hard and mess up the solder.



After much experimentation the reason I settled on covering two of the holes with blutak, is that any more and the sound starts to get muddy. I found that closing off the vents reduces the very low bass which is important in things like kick drums or the classic rumble of dubstep, but it also brightens things up considerably and improves mids, perfect for Blind Guardian or other metal. Closing off both of the vents, and all the holes in the driver resulted in a very bright but muddy sound. I don't notice the reduced low bass much with the configuration I settled on and am very happy with the results. If I compare one moded side to a stock side I can hear the difference in bass but its subtle. The mids, however, are not so subtle and much much improved. YMMV so play around and report back what you did. I would like to have my cake and eat it too of course so if anyone finds a way to keep the low bass rumble while bringing out the mids some more I would love to hear it.