Electret vs. Electrostatic

[ldbishop]

Hi, Everyone, has anyone any knowledge (or guesses) about an Akai ASE-80C Electret headphones model I recently came across. I missed buying it and could not locate anything, myself, which is how I came here. Do you have any idea if Akai may have had a relationship with one of the better known manufacturers, and had their name placed on others' products.

 

[WCtech]

An electrostatic requires its charge from an external source. An Electret is already charged in itself and so only requires the audio signal.

Hello! Trying to dig up these old discussions from a long time ago. I am a noob in the Electret/Electrostatic headphones fields. I see some really deep discussions in this thread, but I am just wondering a simple question. I saw some cool deals for a few pairs of vintage electret headphones online, and as a vintage headphones collector, it would be cool to own them.

The problem is, some of them are missing their energizer/power supply driver, and they use a very weird 7-pin plug, another one uses a weird 6-pin plug (definitely not the standard STAX), and I found no information regarding these connectors, or anything like an adaptor that can allow me to plug them into a STAX driver. (Maybe these are fairly common types of electret connectors, but I just missed them in my search? idk, educate me).

seven-pin connector:

six-pin connector:

So it comes to the question that whether if I can modify the plugs (idk if it's possible to solder a 6.5mm jack onto them?) and plug them into a normal tube amp, or even directly to an un-amplified dac or even to laptop directly? Would that be powerful enough to make them perform? Or would that be totally impossible? I saw some posts on this thread, like the one I quoted, that give me some hope, but again I am a total noob in the field of electrets, so please educate/correct me!

Thanks a lot and stay healthy
Will

 

[rsplodge]

Hello:

I'm new on this forum and just joined as I'm researching an issue with my old Audio Technica AT-706 headphones. These are electret condenser (no bias supply) that I just pulled out of a box in my basement that they had been in for some 20+ years. I thought I had remembered that one channel was gone and at the time had suspected the transformer unit, and I just managed to buy a new/used one from eBay. Well I plugged them into that new/used transformer unit and they did work but weren't very loud. I then went back to my old xfmr unit and that seemed to work too on both channels (so not sure what had originally been wrong with the unit!). However, the volume is low with both xfmr adapters, so I suspect there is another issue. I am using a Yamaha receiver rated for 50W and have to crank it up to full volume to get a mid-level volume on the headphones. Does this likely mean the headphones have lost part of their permanent charge? I saw some comments on this thread about this happening and then others saying this is not the case. Is there anyway to "re-charge" them?!
Thx!