[Tjj226 Angel]

Hello all.

A number of years ago I used to have a pair of HE-500s that I absolutely loved. One day I was experimenting with a mod and a screw got sucked in by the magnets and blasted a huge hole in the diaphragms. : (

I decided to take them apart and reverse engineer the drivers thinking that some day I would find a cheap pair of used HE-500s and I would just swap the drivers. Well no such luck.

Fast forward to today and I am now in the final days of building my own planar headphone from scratch. However I need a cheapish pair of headphones I can use as a reference to judge my DIY headphones. I also build my own amplifiers and I would like something that will be cheap enough that if the amp goes sideways and blows up a pair of headphones, I won't cry over it.

I would love to find a pair of planar headphones that are around 100-200 bucks that give me something similar to what the HE-500s had (I am aware it probably won't be all that close : P). I am also wide open to the idea of modding a pair of cheap headphones to get better sound. There are just so many cheap planars these days I don't even know where to start.

 

[silent-circuit]

I mean, used HE-4XX would be an option at around $100.

I've seen people claim you can find the AR-H1 around $200 used but have yet to see them that low or I'd pick them up if only to compare to the Sendy Audio AIVA, which supposedly uses the same driver.

 

[Tjj226 Angel]

I mean, used HE-4XX would be an option at around $100.

I've seen people claim you can find the AR-H1 around $200 used but have yet to see them that low or I'd pick them up if only to compare to the Sendy Audio AIVA, which supposedly uses the same driver.

I will look into that. I would like to avoid used headphones because the used hifi market is just plain stupid sometimes, but if I can pick up a pair that cheap, I would definitely be interested.

 

[Tjj226 Angel]

Well the universe heard my plea. I just got a good deal on a set of used HE-500s.