Fostex T50RP Incremental Mods and Measurements

[Thujone]

 

I'm an idiot. I removed the cotton and left the foam baffles. I had bass.
LOL, what was I even thinking. Thanks Thujone, I'm going to remove the cotton right now and see where it gets me. I'll just have to get carpet tape or something to make sure the foam baffle doesn't fall out.

edit: I HAVE BASS, THUJONE AND BLUEMONKEYFLYER YOU'RE BOTH THE BEST, WOOO!

This made me lol. I'm glad you got the rumblies back in your ears 

 

[nick n]

if that proves tiresome over time, you can carefully measure up some of that cotton euqally using a cheapo digital scale, that way it's even , and you can write down notes as you increase it .  Something to toy with later maybe.  Glad you got to something you like!

 

[BobSaysHi]

  Awesome. I'll give it a try tomorrow. Thanks for the help, I'll report back.
 
I wasn't ever happy with the quantity of bass I was able to achieve and rereading this thread has inspired me to give it another shot.

 
So I got my driver working again. I didn't take pictures or anything, and my result wasn't clean.
 
I tried to scrape the plastic coating off and expose the copper, but was entirely unsuccessful. I ended up scraping a hole straight through it, sort of concave in shape. I figured some copper had to be exposed in there somewhere so I just tinned the wire I was using previously and used quite a bit of pressure on that spot and tried to solder it on.
 
After several failed attempts I managed to get it to stick and tested to see if it worked, which it did. There is barely anything keeping it together other than hope and a lot of epoxy and hot glue. They're together now though, and working fine. They sound so much better than the other headphones I was using it's crazy.

 

[Argybargy]

BlueMonkey,
 
Thanks for carrying on with the DIY cause.  You're efforts are truly appreciated.
About a year and a half ago I spent hours modding my t50RP and got satisfactory results (can't remember which mod, but it was the popular one with dynamat in the cups, plasticine in the baffles and silverstone just about everywhere else.
 
So now I bought a brand new t50RP and did your DBV#3 mod and with the very first attempt I am 100% satisfied with the sound.  Fantastic.
 
I did have a few variations on your listed mod:
 
Re-cabled with Toxic 7N Cryo cable
Only Silverstone acoustic foam used throughout
Creatology stiff felt only used
Hobby glue used in all instances instead of double sided tape
Mountain Mist Polyfill for stuffing (this is the fill recommended for MarkL's Denon mods)
 
The treble is what strikes me: clear, extended and no sibilance or harshness.  This lends itself to a big soundstage (for a closed phone).  The bass is clean and tight.  I gotta say that this outclasses any mid-fi phones and is in a league with the LCD2.2 and HE-500 (in sound quality and technicalities, not sound signature).
 
One question: no one uses dynamat anymore?  (Sorry, haven't been following these threads for a long time)
 

 

 

[bluemonkeyflyer]

  BlueMonkey,
 
Thanks for carrying on with the DIY cause.  You're efforts are truly appreciated.
About a year and a half ago I spent hours modding my t50RP and got satisfactory results (can't remember which mod, but it was the popular one with dynamat in the cups, plasticine in the baffles and silverstone just about everywhere else.
 
So now I bought a brand new t50RP and did your DBV#3 mod and with the very first attempt I am 100% satisfied with the sound.  Fantastic.
 
I did have a few variations on your listed mod:
 
Re-cabled with Toxic 7N Cryo cable
Only Silverstone acoustic foam used throughout
Creatology stiff felt only used
Hobby glue used in all instances instead of double sided tape
Mountain Mist Polyfill for stuffing (this is the fill recommended for MarkL's Denon mods)
 
The treble is what strikes me: clear, extended and no sibilance or harshness.  This lends itself to a big soundstage (for a closed phone).  The bass is clean and tight.  I gotta say that this outclasses any mid-fi phones and is in a league with the LCD2.2 and HE-500 (in sound quality and technicalities, not sound signature).
 
One question: no one uses dynamat anymore?  (Sorry, haven't been following these threads for a long time)
 

 

 
I love your cable. I want one! 
 
Dynamat? Not so much.
Plasticine or Newplast in the baffles? Not so much, either.
Acoustipack Lite? Not required.
 
Use Silverstone or Paxmate Plus in the cups and rear baffle compartments...and around the ear side of the baffles. Then choose your mod of preference. See "Tuning Rules of Thumb." Tweak to your heart's content. Enjoy good sound on the cheap.

 

[nick n]

^ adhesive felts are even cheaper !

 

[bluemonkeyflyer]

^ adhesive felts are even cheaper !

Good point, nick n. Your Memory Foam Mod is Killer Diller.

I posted my "Riff" of your mod near the bottom of Post #1 of this thread.

I followed your revised and improved Memory Foam Mod and it, too, "Kicks ass and takes names!"

 

[nick n]

Nice to hear it from someone else, it's confirmation I'm not crazy.
 
Will send along the final steps in a word doc. after nailing down that bass vent sealing by the end of the week ( amazing what a few mm can do ). Will leave it up to you if you want to add the latest revision up, send it to the trashbin, or whatever

 
 
that first post is going to run out of room soon !
 
Also like to say that it's an honour to have that posted below all the hard work there you have done. Posted for the good of all .

 

[bluemonkeyflyer]

Nice to hear it from someone else, it's confirmation I'm not crazy.

Will send along the final steps in a word doc. after nailing down that bass vent sealing by the end of the week ( amazing what a few mm can do ). Will leave it up to you if you want to add the latest revision up, send it to the trashbin, or whatever  

that first post is going to run out of room soon !

Also like to say that it's an honour to have that posted below all the hard work there you have done. Posted for the good of all .

Well, you may be crazy but you "got the modding chops!" LOL

I will add whatever you care to share, with pleasure.

Many thanks for your contributions over these past several months.

 

[jimmers]

My T50RP arrived 2 days ago, (order inspired by Magicman's 40 hr mod session) they didn't seem as bad out of the box as I feared - got some idea of how they could sound by cupping my hands around the cups and applying pressure.
I took them home that evening and, after staring at them for a while, decided to take them apart.  
I loaded the baffle etc. with modelling clay, sealed most of the vent grill, stuck some foam in the cups, put in some fluffed cotton balls - and I'd had enough (tweak energy dissipated in an hour) - screwed them back together and fitted 840 pads. 
I might only be half way to max sound-wise (or maybe I got lucky) but damn they sound good, spent the rest of the evening until late listening to music with them.
I took them back into work the next day, a teenage Beats fan had a listen and "Oh,wow" was his wide-eyed response. 
 
I'd like to thank OP and all contributors for leading me to this (maybe I'll try harder one day).
 
Ooops, sorry, posted in the wrong thread.

 

[Claritas]

I have some exciting news, for me and maybe some of you. First, I want to thank BMF for inspiring me to take the X-Acto knife into my own hands.
 
I dislike pleather because it gets hot, so I replace it with velour. This works well with my sound preferences, as I prefer a bass-light sound. But there's something else I dislike: shallow earcups or earpads that make the earcups shallow. It distracts me when I'm listening if my eartips are touching the baffle cover.
 
I replaced the stock Fostex pads with SRH940 velours, but they have a backing--maybe that's the "dust cover" mentioned in some posts--that was touching my ears. Quite a while ago, I read a post in another thread by someone who tried to remove the backing on the SRH840 pleathers using an X-Acto knife because he didn't like the effect that the backing has on the sound of Fostex. He didn't recommend removing the backing, because it's too easy to damage the pad (which he did). Searching through this thread, I see that Thujone 
asked about this in May.
 
Another reason I was concerned about removing the backing is that the stock Fostex felt behind it is quite stiff and not especially soft. But I remembered that it hadn't made me uncomfortable in the first days I owned it, before the Shure velours arrived.
 
After a while, I became annoyed by the discomfort, so I decided to risk damaging the pads. Using an X-Acto knife to cut and most of an index card to protect the pad (see photo), I patiently cut the backing off. Note: It's important to hold the backing somewhat taut whilst cutting or it will be hard to cut cleanly. When I was putting the pads back on, I noticed that they had taken on the backwards D-shape of my ears a little, so I was careful to put them back on to fit right. 
 
Clockwise: pads, backings cut out, X-Acto knife, index card
 

 
Pad (reserve side)
 

 
Pad (reverse side, rolled back)
 

 
The result is definitely more comfortable. It completely solved the problem in my right earcup; the left earcup is not perfect though it's a very substantial improvement. My ear almost barely touches it. I can feel the Fostex baffle cover the slightest bit, but its stiffness hasn't bothered me so far. Indeed, the stiffness is more comfortable touch my ear than the fuzziness of the backing of Shure velour. (I confess I'm now vaguely considering using foam tape to raise the pads that last bit away from the baffle, but I'd be concerned about the effect on the sound.) The temperature is also slightly cooler.
 
I was wearing my Fostex to watch a mystery on my laptop when I decided to excise the backing. Afterward, I went back to the program and the first thing I noticed about the sound was the effect on volume. I immediately had to turn the volume down on my laptop from 18/50 to 16/50. I like listen low to begin with, so this is more good news.
 
The most noticeable effect is increased clarity, particularly in the treble. The backing must have muffled the sound the slightest bit. In addition, the sound is slightly brighter and very slightly more open sounding. That shouldn't surprise us, because the suggested remedy to hot treble is to add gauze or other material behind the backing. Maybe it sounds slightly livelier too? I'm going to have to increase the size of the bass port to compensate for the effect on the treble.

 

[Thujone]

Your experience seems to jive with my suspicion: it acts as a treble dampener as well as an overall muffle (requiring more volume). Thanks for sharing!

 

[Smugsie]

Your experience seems to jive with my suspicion: it acts as a treble dampener as well as an overall muffle (requiring more volume). Thanks for sharing!

I got bored of my basshead t50's xD
Turns out I'm just a mids/treble freak (My first audiophile grade headphone is an audiotechnica, so...)

So just to confirm, if I want to avoid that treble dampener, I can just leave the bass port open? I want to keep the higher trebles in there, but I'm used to of having the recessed 2-3khz range at -5 to -10db. While the 5-10khz range are usually at the 0db range with everything else

 

[Thujone]

If you tune to DBV#3, you should have flat and extended treble. If you remove the dust cover on the 840 pads as suggested above, you will likely end up with elevated treble.

 

[SanjiWatsuki]

  If you tune to DBV#3, you should have flat and extended treble. If you remove the dust cover on the 840 pads as suggested above, you will likely end up with elevated treble.

The DBV#3 showed up with a somewhat recessed treble in the Rin Choi measurements, though, didn't it?