It has nothing to do with improvements. All I'm saying is that the ONLY way I'll EVER consider a leather pad (on ANY headphone), is with a velour top, like the Orpheus. I highly doubt the pads themselves are anywhere near worth the price the Orpheus itself. Anyone who stitches and knows their materials should be able to retrofit a velour 'skin' on the top portion of any leather pads.
Thing is, no one has, as of yet.
I wouldn't expect a magical improvement or anything of the like. In the case of the D7000, I would hope the stock pad's sound remains the exact same, despite the contact area being velour. I certainly had zero desire to fix anything off the D7000 which is why I stuck to the stock pads, instead of going with J$ or Lawton pads which were known to CHANGE their sound. I wanted NO changes. The D7000 is basically perfect for my tastes, and don't need any added or taken away. So if anyone came up with velour tops for the stock D7000 pads that didn't change the sound, I'd be selling all my headphone gear just to get another pair of D7000s.
If the J$ pads add just a small amount of bass to the HE-400 (which would undoubtedly be due to the bigger distance from the driver compared to the other pads), then I'd wanna try them as long as it had a velour top. I wouldn't expect miraculous changes or anything else otherwise, with the exception of the warmer tone the leather would provide over the velours. The HE-400 is already warm enough.
