[kvtaco17]

^ my favorite pairing!

 

[GPAUDI]

Hi, has anyone got any experience of replacing the ear cushions of PS 500 with those of PS 1000? When I rang up the Grado dealer here, I was told they would not fit. This is in contradiction with some of the blogs I have read. The stock cushions of PS 500 exert too much pressure on my ears after listening for 30 minutes or so and I am looking for a solution.
 
Thx for advice in advance.

 

[GPAUDI]

Hi, has anyone got any experience of replacing the ear cushions of PS 500 with those of PS 1000? When I rang up the Grado dealer here, I was told they would not fit. This is in contradiction with some of the blogs I have read. The stock cushions of PS 500 exert too much pressure on my ears after listening for 30 minutes or so and I am looking for a solution.
 
Thx for advice in advance.

 

[kvtaco17]

They flat out lied... I have g cushions on my ps500 right now... Its a more spacious (closer to) neural sound... And super comfy...

 

[bbophead]

Quote:

They flat out lied... I have g cushions on my ps500 right now... Its a more spacious (closer to) neural sound... And super comfy...

+1 and then some.

 

[Digitalchkn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvtaco17 

They flat out lied... I have g cushions on my ps500 right now... Its a more spacious (closer to) neural sound... And super comfy...

 

+1 and then some.
 

Got my PS500s couple of weeks ago and was impressed right off the bat.  Switched over to g-cush cups. Definite gain on the spaciousness, but lost that tight bass+low mids and became overly bright. On the plus side, smoothed out that 2KHz "in-your face" peak without loosing the presence.
 
Long story short, I ended up angling the drivers over my years by pulling the front edge of foam towards the metal part of the driver with electrical tape. Three pieces of tape with equal amount of pull at approximately 1, 3, and 5 o'clock on the cup seems to work great without compromising comfort.
The best part is that by varying amount of that pull-back you can control the angle and somewhat balance out the bass and treble to your liking. That really did it! The problem is damn tape keeps on unpealing from the foam, so I'm looking for another way to do this.
 
Anyone else here willing to try that and let me know if what they think?
 
BTW, my T1 hasn't had much head time lately as a result. 

 

[kvtaco17]

Quote:

Got my PS500s couple of weeks ago and was impressed right off the bat.  Switched over to g-cush cups. Definite gain on the spaciousness, but lost that tight bass+low mids and became overly bright. On the plus side, smoothed out that 2KHz "in-your face" peak without loosing the presence.
 
Long story short, I ended up angling the drivers over my years by pulling the front edge of foam towards the metal part of the driver with electrical tape. Three pieces of tape with equal amount of pull at approximately 1, 3, and 5 o'clock on the cup seems to work great without compromising comfort.
The best part is that by varying amount of that pull-back you can control the angle and somewhat balance out the bass and treble to your liking. That really did it! The problem is damn tape keeps on unpealing from the foam, so I'm looking for another way to do this.
 
Anyone else here willing to try that and let me know if what they think?
 
BTW, my T1 hasn't had much head time lately as a result. 

Wash the pads tonight before bed with some shampoo... ring them out thoroughly... Tomorrow put them on and once your ready to listen to something push the cups into the sides of your face. The washing softens up the cushions... shoving them into the sides of your face moves the driver closer and with the pads washed it should stay relatively close to where you put them.
 
The other solution involves a thread and needle... I've seen people sew the front of the pads to themselves to angle the driver.

 

[kvtaco17]

Also what amp are you using?

 

[Digitalchkn]

Quote:

Also what amp are you using?

I'm driving it with Centrance dacmini.
 
Did you mean to sew the cups to themselves, or sew the cups to myself? If the latter, I mean I like the sound and all, but I am not ready for that level of commitment.
 
I've been tought at a fairly early age that you can fix just about anything with scotch.  I guess doesn't necessarily apply to headphone cups. Although, it does spawn the topic of using various brands of tape and impact on the frequency responses. (Coincidentally, I have experimented with taping the stock L-cush around the periphery on an RS1i and I did find electrical tape sounds smoother than scotch).

 

[kvtaco17]

Yeah try sewing the ear pads to you lol
 
A warmer tube based amp is my recommendation with the G-cush
 

 

[Digitalchkn]

Quote:

Yeah try sewing the ear pads to you lol
 
A warmer tube based amp is my recommendation with the G-cush
 

Sure. But to me, the stock G-cush makes it sound distant, bright, and slightly hollow. A bit like listening to a seashell. My T1 has slight tendency to that as well (undammpened cavity, I guess). I had a listen to PS1000 once and didn't like it for that reason. Didn't think to angle driver at that time. But angle the '500 driver and pressing it in just enough seems to be just the trick for me.  The l-cush naturally align rotate themselves onto the angle of your ears, but that point apparantly got missed in the design of g-cush. 

 

[hfhimeka]

I haven't seen anyone ever mention this, but has anyone ever noticed that the headphone serial number is also inscribed on the back of the plastic piece that designates L and R?

 

[brokenthumb]

Yeah, I noticed that when I received my pair.  I always thought it was only under the ear cushions.

 

[Digitalchkn]

I wanted to report my findings with PS500 and playing with the output resistance of my Centrance DacMini.  This experiment stemmed from the excellent measurements by Tyll @ Innerfidelity that shows a clear impedance resonance in the viscinity of 80-90Hz. Indeed, in my listening I found a bit of blooming on the low end.
 

 
Since the default output of the DacMini is set to 10ohms I was wondering what effect there is from that impedance resonance.  Below is a step response at 25Hz with DacMini driving the PS500 with 10ohm output. There is some ringing which corresponds pretty well to the frequency of impedance resonance (I measure approx 75 Hz here) . Note that this is voltage response into the headphone at the jack -- this is not the same as calibrated sound response that you see in Innerfidelity plots.
 

 
 
Next I replaced the output resistor to a 1 ohm. This improves the DF significantly as you can see from the new step response.

 
 
Measurements are nice, but the acid test is the sound. Not only did the change noticeably reduced the bass response, it also somewhat tamed the sibilance. Overall response became far more neutral, perhaps more so than I would like. I am planning to experiment with 5ohm output hoping to strike a good balance.  I should note that I mod my PS500 with G-cush to slightly forward angle the drivers.

 

[EcologyOfSound]

Just picked some up and they sound glorious . I put on some PS1000 cushions and the airy difference is incredible.

My previous experience has been AKG's.