So... I have been cooped up in my apartment with a broken leg (after 4 months of being cooped up in it getting my ankle fused earlier) and I have gone insane a few times (if you fight with your dog, and your dog doesn't realize you are fighting with it, you might be insane... ) and needed a project for (what was left of) my sanity, and since world domination would require actual effort, I looked for something to do with headphones, and stumbled across the Fostex t50rp's and all the stuff about modding them, particularly this thread, and the prices for the pre-modded ones (wow, $600? Does LFF fill them with printer ink?) and decided, hey, that sounds awesome, I mean, I already have a pair of ATH-AD700's, and a pair of Allesandro MS2's, both of which I love, driven by an O2 amp, which I almost love more... I lost my train of thought... oh, yeah, so I decided to do it! I looked at the prices (where was I when they were only $70?) and had to get them from B&H. I got the t50rp's in the mail and tried them out, and I liked them, they sounded so different from the fully open cans I have, but I wanted more (who doesn't?)!
After looking at the prices for half of the material I was like, wow, $15~30 for one square foot of sound dampener? What is this, made from solidified printer ink or something? I decided to try doing this my way, the cheapest way, for the sake of my sanity (it gave me something to do), plus I am cheap, and I got in a square foot of this foil covered butyl, for $1.50, shipped, and was like, uh, this might not work, but hey, in for a penny, in for a pound (or a buck fifty) then I had to find some stiffened felt, non-adhesive, another $3.00 (man, you have to love Ebay auctions), now I have like a couple of square yards of the stuff, and got some cotton balls from Target (would have gone with the stuff recommended, but I have mobility issues, and Target was right there...) and proceeded on the modification, after reading the article from BMF like a dozen times (ok, I really skimmed it a lot since, you know, I am a guy and who needs instructions anyway?) and I did all the steps, using crayola clay in place of Plasticine (2 something on Amazon), and it was a bit of a mess (and really shiny) inside, but I jumped in with both feet and teased the cotton balls apart (remember that skimmed thing?) and squeezed the cups back together...
Man, did that suck, my O2 had to push to make them play, like 3/4 of the way up, the Ipod 90 some odd percent up, and still really not all that. I had muddy, muffled mid bass, and not much lower bass, fantastic and crisp details in the mid and upper ranges, but I like my bass. I have been working on them for 2 weeks now, adjusting one thing at a time, as BMF suggests (I DID read that part) and still crap! I read other people's suggestions in this thread, still one at a time, and... mud!
I was about to take out a piece of cotton on both sides and was wondering if it would work, so I read the part about the cotton, unmolested, and was like, uh... 20 minutes later I plugged them back into the O2, and turned it down a bit (just in case, but I wasn't holding out hope) and Tegan & Sara's Heavy was the first in the shoot and... if I wasn't already a fan of theirs I would have been after that, it was crystal clear, just being acoustic guitar and various drum... hey, drums! omg! The bass! OMG! then Peaches AA XXX came on, which contains a bass line which is something that just is a tone which made me turn the gain off (I forgot it was on till just that moment) because it is, uh, painful, but, WOW! Then a poem from Emily Autumn's Your Sugar Sits Untouched, and the definition was amazing, then Laurie Anderson's Sharky's Night... the soundstage! Before I knew it an hour had gone by as I played different songs to see how they sounded...
I see I have a bit more tuning to do, and am looking forward to it now (I was dreading opening the things up for the umpteenth time) and finally see what all the fuss is about, these things rock! They wont make me abandon my open can's, but I can actually use these out and about, and they are awesome, I just have to do some comfort modding now, the headband is horrible, recycled printer ink containers have to go somewhere I suppose, but in my headphone band? I did see some knitted band covers on Ebay and ordered a set to put on the Grado's, but will try them on here first, and I need a case... oh, happy Happy HAPPY!
All in all, $107 for the cans, under ten bucks for enough stuff to do at least a dozen more, and I have something I really like, and something I look forward to tuning, and part of my sanity back (I think, well, hope!), I say, money well spent!
So, lesson learned, don't tease the cotton, it'll F up your bass!
Seriously, Thank You BMF (my dog thanks you too)!
