[kernow]

Damn, the foam rings inside have completely disintigrated due to age, I don't want to spend too much refurbishing these as they are a bit beaten up, I know you can get new parts from frank at AKG or whatever - but does anyone have a cheaper solution?

 

[Armaegis]

Polyfill would be simplest, but you could also try cut up stockings, bits of opencell craft foam, etc...

 

[RexAeterna]

polyfill will work fine. you also don't really have to replace the dampen foam either really. they were just put there to prevent sound leakage so it will not affect the headphones sound at all. i mean if you need it to prevent sound leakage then polyfill can help or go to like a fabric shop locally and you can pick up some felt material dirt cheap or can even experiment yourself.

 

[Armaegis]

The old foam stuff disintegrates into a mess though. It'll leave black residue all over the place. Better to take it out before it goes to dust and gets all into the driver and diffusers. 

 

[kernow]

Yeah, I've taken it out and cleaned them up, the headphones are in pieces right now, I might need some help when I go to rewire them to make sure they are done correctly before sealing them all up again!

I've emailed frank regarding some new felt damping rings and a couple of elastics while I'm at it.

Another thing, I usually just plug them straight into my laptop and I thought they sounded fine before, but obviously they are designed for a headphone amp - does anyone have a cheap but solid recommendation for maybe 50-100£ that would drive the 600 ohm load ok? I am not really looking for a portable one, I'd quite like to run my Quad CDP-2 cd player into it via the fixed outputs also so something like a pro-ject headbox 2 or similar, maybe with a bit of weight to it so I don't pull it off the rack moving the headphones (I hear this is quite common with the smaller ones).

Cheers.

I hope frank replies, it's been 2 days now and nothing.

 

[RexAeterna]

The old foam stuff disintegrates into a mess though. It'll leave black residue all over the place. Better to take it out before it goes to dust and gets all into the driver and diffusers. 

i didn't say leave them in there. just saying you do not have to replace them with anything else is all i'm saying. of course cleaning it is important.

 

[Adda]

Yeah, I've taken it out and cleaned them up, the headphones are in pieces right now, I might need some help when I go to rewire them to make sure they are done correctly before sealing them all up again!
I've emailed frank regarding some new felt damping rings and a couple of elastics while I'm at it.
Another thing, I usually just plug them straight into my laptop and I thought they sounded fine before, but obviously they are designed for a headphone amp - does anyone have a cheap but solid recommendation for maybe 50-100£ that would drive the 600 ohm load ok? I am not really looking for a portable one, I'd quite like to run my Quad CDP-2 cd player into it via the fixed outputs also so something like a pro-ject headbox 2 or similar, maybe with a bit of weight to it so I don't pull it off the rack moving the headphones (I hear this is quite common with the smaller ones).
Cheers.
I hope frank replies, it's been 2 days now and nothing.

The best amp solution at a low price would most likely be a vintage receiver, take a look at this thread:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/537704/calling-all-vintage-integrated-receiver-owners

 

[kernow]

Maybe, I'd prefer a dedicated headphone amp to be honest. I'm not going to go out and get a £20 vintage amp when I have a nice pre/power already. Just want something small I can connect the CDP to directly and thats it.

 

[RexAeterna]

Yeah, I've taken it out and cleaned them up, the headphones are in pieces right now, I might need some help when I go to rewire them to make sure they are done correctly before sealing them all up again!
I've emailed frank regarding some new felt damping rings and a couple of elastics while I'm at it.
Another thing, I usually just plug them straight into my laptop and I thought they sounded fine before, but obviously they are designed for a headphone amp - does anyone have a cheap but solid recommendation for maybe 50-100£ that would drive the 600 ohm load ok? I am not really looking for a portable one, I'd quite like to run my Quad CDP-2 cd player into it via the fixed outputs also so something like a pro-ject headbox 2 or similar, maybe with a bit of weight to it so I don't pull it off the rack moving the headphones (I hear this is quite common with the smaller ones).
Cheers.
I hope frank replies, it's been 2 days now and nothing.

headphone amps weren't invented at the the time the sextetts were designed and produced. they were design to be used on very large mixer boards with a 600ohm output impedance or power amps instead at the time. lot of rack pre-amp mixers had unbalanced and balanced 600ohm outputs as well. the sextetts are also designed with a balanced 1/4'' TRS connector so they can be wired or use of an adapter for balanced XLR on mixers with 600ohm output impedances.

the project headbox looks like it'll do pretty well at 600ohms but the sextetts do tend to open up more with more power you feed especially if you want that deep bass extension and high treble extension they can produce. you have any idea what sextett model you have?

 

[kernow]

Not entirely sure, it has the white paper drums, is there anything else to identify them by?

 

[rhythmdevils]

check the beginning of this thread for pictures

 

[kernow]

Hmm, from what I can gather, middle version, white paper drivers with grey backing. Might be wrong though.

Waiting on some pads which should come tomorrow, then I'll wait for a bit for frank to reply and if the prices aren't too outrageous I'll order the elastics and foam dampers, if not I'll have to macgyver something together myself because I'm impatient, hehe.

 

[RexAeterna]

white passive drivers and grey acoustic resistors indicate late production if i'm correct. they also used 2 different drivers as well for some sextetts. some had a reflective dome driver and others didn't from what i learned not too long ago that i personally did not know either. i think the middle and early production models tended to use the reflective dome driver.

 

[rhythmdevils]

Quote:

polyfill will work fine. you also don't really have to replace the dampen foam either really. they were just put there to prevent sound leakage so it will not affect the headphones sound at all. i mean if you need it to prevent sound leakage then polyfill can help or go to like a fabric shop locally and you can pick up some felt material dirt cheap or can even experiment yourself.

hmmm open cell foam won't do much to prevent sound leakage.  The foam is to give the cups a nice springy effect when they reach the limit of their angle adjusting, instead of just stopping against plastic.  It's always a good idea to have some foam inside a chamber like that, but I don't think the intention was for acoustic purposes. 

 

[RexAeterna]

hmmm open cell foam won't do much to prevent sound leakage.  The foam is to give the cups a nice springy effect when they reach the limit of their angle adjusting, instead of just stopping against plastic.  It's always a good idea to have some foam inside a chamber like that, but I don't think the intention was for acoustic purposes. 

well polyfill will work pretty well for high and midrange frequency resonance and i use it a lot for stuffing speakers if i don't have fiberglass or can't get hold of fiberglass. helps well especially for taming the highs and midrange but i never tried it in headphones. i would guess some felt would do better cause now that i think of it, polyfill is only useful in certain volumes of usage,so yea, it seems you are pretty right on that. i personally just can't say for sure.