HD580 head band repair/replacement

Jan 3, 2010 at 5:50 AM Post #16 of 23
Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Yes. That's the one. Somewhere he's got a post explaining how he did that frankenstein mod.

I can't believe you found a picture of the phones. My search-fu is weak.



More search-fu;
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/hd6...ml#post5925382

Scroll up to see aforementioned belt-mod too! So it looks like a Sony MDR-F1 headband worked.

I've read frequent mentions of the Jmoney Lambskin headbands - anyone know if they adapt to the 580s easily?
 
Jan 4, 2010 at 6:36 AM Post #17 of 23
Hello,

I had the same problem (my 580 headband cracked in half near top middle like yours) and had a hard time finding solutions on the web or even steps on how to cheaply resolve the problem. For a while I duct taped the thing together but the headband no longer provided enough pressure to keep these headphones on my head, so I decided to find my own solution.

Here is what I did:

Step 1.

I went out and bought 3 things: black electrical tape and Gorilla super glue from home depot. Then I went to Target and bought goody brand annie headbands (in womens section) which has the same functions as a headphone headband in the sense that it fits the same way over your head, except it's a women's accessory to hold hair back.

So:
1. electrical tape = ~$1-4
2. gorilla brand super glue single 20 oz. clear bottle, impact-tough formula with recloseable top) = ~$5
3. a cheap set of women's headbands (that seem easy to cut apart and also have good flexibility) = $3-5 -- Please pick one with as close a curvature as possible to the Sennheiser headband, or it may not work!

Step 2.

Take off the headband portion of the Sennheiser HD580.

You do this by pulling the head adjustments all the way so that both left and right are fully extended. Then if you look on the underside of the headband on the edge on either side there is a small black rectangular plastic labelled : "Made in Ireland". Carefully lift those two pieces off. Once they are off you may continue extending the ear pieces until they fully detach from the headband.

Step 3.

Apply the Gorilla Super Glue to both sides of the cracks on your Sennheiser headband and clamp them firmly together with your hands and hold for 30 seconds or longer. (I hold them for about 1-2 minutes). After that the headband should be in a pretty firm position by itself, but lets not get excited yet as it still needs support.

Step 3.

At this point I add a layer of black electrical tape on the top side of the Sennheiser headband. Make sure that this layer covers as much of the top surface as you can. This layer is to protect the original surface of the Sennheiser headband.

Step 4.

Once a layer of electrical tape has been added at the top-side's surface area of the headband, what you want to do is to cut and fit the woman's headband over the top of your Sennheiser headband. The women's headband will act as a brace which sits directly on top of your cracked Sennheisers. You'll probably need a strong pair of scissors or steel cutters and cut about 2-4 inches on either side of the women's headband to get it to fit comfortably over the Sennheiser headband.

The women's headband should be slightly shorter (about 1/4 of an inch shorter) on either side and not extend longer than the Sennheiser headband.

Once you've cut the women's headband to the right length what you want to do is to strip it of it's outter material. Since mine was a simple piece of gray plastic underneath I just peeled the black cloth off and used plastic. This is important as we will be glueing the plastic part onto the electrical tape layer that we added over the Sennheiser headband.

Step 5.

At this point (if you picked a headband with a close curvature) you can lay the bare plastic on top of your Sennheiser headband and if you press it down slightly it should seem like it will be a good fit (it can be slightly off since the curve will not match exactly, but you should still be able to make it so that all the surfaces touch).

Once you know the fit is good, apply the Gorilla super glue on the under side of the stripped plastic women's headband that you just modded and glue that on top of the Sennheiser headband (if you don't want to ruin your Sennheisers for good, I suggest you make sure it only makes contact with the layer of electrical tape).

Make sure that all the surfaces are firmly touching, which may require you to hold several areas firmly in place. At the same time don't be so rough that you risk snapping the headband again. If you've done the steps correctly to this point you should now have a pretty firm brace on your Sennheiser headbands.

Step 6.

Now, at this point it may look like the brace may fly out if too much pressure is applied, so what we're going to do is to apply a layer of black electrical tape to help the super glue hold that brace there. So just cut some thin strips of electrical tape to wrap the plastic brace in place. What i did was I cut each strip of electrical tape (approximately 4 inches long into two thin 4 inch-long pieces) and loop them between the 4 foam pads and also at the ends to hold the brace in place. It's hard to explain, but imagine wrapping a burrito, the idea is to hold the brace firmly in place on top of the headband to reinforce the super glue, but to leave the 4 foam pads sticking out alone.

Step 7.

Leave this overnight, or at least a few hours so that the glue can have some time to bond, and then reassemble the rest of the parts in reverse order.
 
Feb 1, 2010 at 5:15 PM Post #18 of 23
Just noticed last night that there is a hairline crack running halfway across near the top of the headband on my HD580's. I am thinking I might use a thumb-tack to get some krazy glue in there and prevent the crack from expanding. Any other thoughts as to how to avoid a total catastrophe?
 
Feb 1, 2010 at 6:43 PM Post #19 of 23
The first thing I learned doing this was don't use Krazy Glue.

This is a rough draft, I will refine it later when I'm not at work, and include pics;

I took pretty detailed pictures during the course of my repair experiments, including a lot of foibles along the way. At first, I tried super glue/krazy glue - totally ineffective. Snapped immediately, and left a crust that meant the crack no longer fit together. I worked my way up to a plan I mentioned a couple posts up, which was to use modeling sheet aluminum, and I used Gorilla Glue along the top of the band to adhere it, and then painted it - the result was very unsatisfactory. Lumpy, ugly, bulky.

Here's what finally worked for me, and the run up to it;

In order to remove the Gorilla Glue, Super glue/krazy glue residue, and spray paint I had applied over three repair attempts,I soaked the headband in acetone for a couple hours. This completely removed my prior gluing attempts, and also the paint - which will be a non issue by the end of this plan. It may have been helpful, from an adhesion perspective, that it was stripped down to the base material.

I purchased a couple sheets of this;

TowerHobbies.com | K&S Aluminum Sheet 4x10" .032" (6)

From my local hobby shop - less than $2 a sheet. You should only need one, but if you cut wrong, you'll wish you bought two. It was in the high end model airplane section.

You'll need fairly bulky scissors to cut the aluminum, and ones you don't mind ruining by cutting and a file to trim down any rough or uneven edges after you're done.

You will also need strong double sided tape, black electrical tape, and a Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro headband pad. Beyerdynamic Part# 990.681, which can be purchased from their authorized USA service center, Sound Surgeon Long Island. The headband pad is less than $10. It took them a couple days to get back to the message I left, but they definitely had them in stock, and its the only place in the Americas I found that sold it.

I cut two strips from the aluminum;

The first one should be exactly the same size as backing on the foam headband piece from the inside track. This is easy enough to do - lay it down on the aluminum, trace, and then cut.

The second piece should be the length of the top of the headband, from inside the angled bend at each end, and the same width. I used a piece of string to get the length measurement.

The inner aluminum strip should fit along the inside channel, where the headband pad was. Slide it in very carefully, it will be a tight fit and pushing too hard will crack your headband. You may need to take a pair of needle nose pliers/leatherman and pull it through the last 1/3 of the way.

This is the majority of the tension/support in this fix, and on mine where I didn't even glue the crack shut, the result is more sturdy than it was originally.

Bend the outer strip into a curve, slightly more acute than the curve of the headband itself.

Cut two pieces of double sided tape, their length the same as the width of the outer aluminum strip. Put them on each end, and use them to anchor the outer aluminum strip along the top of the headband.

Put the actual phones on their metal clip strips back into the headband, and replace the "Made In Ireland" plastic clips that keep them from falling out.

Wrap the entire headband, end to end, spiral, in black electrical tape. Be sure to pull on the tape as you wrap it to take advantage of the vinyl's elasticity.

The last step is to snap the Beyer headband pad around the headband - the length is a perfect match, so you won't be able to see any of your taped up Frankenstein headband.

The result should be incredibly durable, as the inner aluminum strip should hold against most of the flex, and the tape secures the outer strip to the top side of the headband with a small amount of flex, so it's not so uncomfortably rigid. The padding on the Beyer headband, against the slightly springy gap between the tape and the inner aluminum band (about 1/16" gap) is more than enough comfort for me, YMMV.

The materials cost should be less than $20, which is less than 1/4th of what it would cost you to order a new headband from Sennheiser, and the result should be far more sturdy than another frail headband that's likely to break on you again.
 
Feb 1, 2010 at 8:49 PM Post #20 of 23
Sounds like a good fix, thanks. Was this for a completely snapped headband, or one with a small crack? I really don't feel like going through all these steps for a hairline crack, the headband is still pretty strong...
 
Feb 1, 2010 at 9:25 PM Post #21 of 23
If your headphone has a small crack that's slowly developing, I'm willing to bet you could arrest it by putting some epoxy in the crack and then wrapping it tightly in electrical tape afterwards. $80 for a new headband is ridiculous...Grado charged me $30 to replace the drivers and cable when they went bad in my SR80.
 
Feb 1, 2010 at 9:31 PM Post #22 of 23
Quote:

Originally Posted by ƒractaL /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Sounds like a good fix, thanks. Was this for a completely snapped headband, or one with a small crack? I really don't feel like going through all these steps for a hairline crack, the headband is still pretty strong...


It was completely snapped - but the snap developed from a hairline crack. Considering the track record these things have of breaking, I'd suggest that even Epoxy is only a short term fix.
 
Feb 2, 2017 at 10:59 PM Post #23 of 23
I guess this is a very old thread, but my HD 580 headband just snapped for the second time (first fix was flexible aluminum strip attached with epoxy). This looks very interesting, a 3D-printed replacement for $38 + $5 US shipping:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/9QKXAU59F/sennheiser-replacement-headband
 

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