Things are finally coming together for my new build! As I mentioned a couple posts back, I ordered some aluminum gimbals from
@retox on ebay. Another user expressed his issues with gimbals of this style and similar ones such as the ones available on www.rholupat.com citing the fact that they are too wide and thus restrict movement of the cups, which causes poor fit when wearing the headphones.
Today, I took receipt of the V2 aluminum gimbals by
@retox which have been reworked to be thinner for a better fit and refinished for a cleaner look. I will compare V1 and V2 of his gimbals below.
Since my headband assembly arrived, I finally could put my new Nhoord build together.
For a couple days now I've had the V1 gimbals installed. I expected that I would have problems with comfort and fit due to the width of the gimbals. The truth is, I actually did not notice any problem in these areas. I think it is possible that head shape is a factor and that some people may have more problems than others, but to me, the fit was fine. The cups fit flush against my ears. I think that the lack of movement did cause the clamp to be a touch tighter on the upper half of the cups, but it wasn't really noticeable at all until I installed the V2 gimbals and tried to think about how they feel different.
Here are a couple pictures of the V1 gimbals:
So, to recap my previous post, I felt like it was necessary to use a green Scotch-Brite pad to even out the finish of the V1 gimbals. The result of my effort can be seen in the pictures above (I don't have any before pics). This took a good 30 minutes total to do on both gimbals. They look quite good IMO. The finish really did need a bit of work to do justice to the fine work of the custom cups made by
@fleasbaby
So, since the fit of the V1 gimbals was good enough, what do the V2 gimbals really offer? Well, I can tell you that the finish on the V2 gimbals was much, much better than the state of the finish when I got the V1. It was very obvious that more effort was put into making the V2 look nice. And they do look nice indeed. Further, the V2 is noticeably thinner than the V1, meaning that I now have some wiggle room with the cups! Because of the added play in the cups, the drivers now actually sit a bit better, more even with my ears than they did before. I guess I didn't really realize what I was missing out on fit-wise until I installed the V2 gimbals. To be clear, I could live happily with the V1, but the V2 is definitely a better design. You can see from the picture below that even just sitting on the headphone stand, the cups are now resting at a different angle than before.
See V2 pictures below:
V1 in my hand, V2 installed:
So, there you go! These gimbals are great, reasonably priced, and they ship quickly from the USA. They get my full recommendation.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I'm using the vinyl caps that came on my stock gimbals because they are about half the length of the ones that come with these aftermarket gimbals. Just an aesthetic preference.
