Modulor Jergpads pics & impressions/notes
As many of you may (or may not) have known, Modulor, a fellow Head-fier who frequents the threads here, has taken on the task of perfecting some production-level modded Jergpads over the last months. He was kind enough to send a pair from the first batch he's been crafting to me for testing and critique, and the package arrived a couple of hours ago. I did some photos of the contents and some steps of preparation so that the pads could be properly installed, and then did some preliminary listening on em (still listening atm) with notes.
Here we go...
Contents included: 2x Modulor Jergpads (damping holes + velour top mods already done), 2x rings of foam inserts (hole-punched to match the mounting ring holes), 4 strips of hole-punched double-sided tape, and 16 hard venting foam pieces with adhesive feet.
A small instruction slip will be included in the production sets Modulor sends out in the near future, according to him. He will also be writing up a more comprehensive instruction guide online.
You will only need to use 2 strips of the double-sided tape, and 8 venting foam pieces; the other half seem to be extra backup stuff in case you want to replace any of them in the future for maintenance of the pads. Very considerate!
Brief closeup examination of the pads reveal that Modulor did an impeccable job doing the damping holes and especially the velour top mod.
The holes on the underside are all cut very cleanly and of equal sizes/distances, meanwhile he used a great trick of transplanting the entire fabric of the velour pads (including the rubber flaps) over the pleather pad bases, which minimizes the amount of vulnerable junctions between the velour and the pleather pad; speaking of sewing, the sewing job (as shown in above photo) is again flawless, I can hardly see or feel any exposed threading, and it is a really smooth sewn boundary.
Close-up of the venting foam pieces, and the double-sided tape strips (sandwiched in cardboard).
Closeup of the insert foam rings with punched holes; I later tried this in the pads, and they do allow for more prominent treble and upper midrange, as well as bass that is a touch harder-hitting, at the expense of making the midrange a bit too dry, and making the earpads a little too stiff for perfect comfort.
As Modulor and I have discussed in PMs prior, these are really just optional and those getting the modded pads from Modulor and welcome to try with/without them and hear for themselves.
I started adding the double-sided tape on the bases of the pads for the sub-bass mod. This is really, really easy compared to the way I did, because the tape Modulor included are conveniently squares with holes punched in them, so you just peel the protective film off 1 square of the tape, line the hole up, press down hard, and peel.
All 9 pieces of tape done on the first pad; only took about a minute.
The "back-vent" foam pieces are even easier to put on, just peel the protective film off the feet of the pieces and expose the adhesive surface, and press these on.
Doing the same thing on the second pad..
Still going..
And all done and ready to go! All the double-sided tapes and foam pieces altogether took me about 6 minutes to put on just because I was being careful aligning every tape/foam piece.
My original v2.0 Jergpads also laid out, just to compare which set is more ghetto
Installing these pads on is not too hard, just be sure that the backvents line up to the yoke screw facing you when you hold the headphones.
You could use a mini flat-head screwdriver to carefully pop in the two mounting ring tabs flanking the mini-vent foam pieces, or alternatively cut out a long strip from a hard plastic card and use that to wedge the tabs in.
I must say, the velour top mod approach Modulor used, if anything, looks really pleasing to the eye. At a glance these just look like velour earpads that are shaped like pleather pads, and have some black foam squares at the back. A very discrete and clean aesthetic. Me-likey.
Build Quality / Durability
- Build quality is exceptional. I did not ever think the full jergpad mod could be done to this degree of precision and cleanness, but Modulor's managed to pull it off. The most notable part is again the velour top mod, which he pulled off in such a nice way that the pads hardly even look modded. I'm very sure these pads are gonna last as long as stock earpads would.
- The double-sided tape included that's for the subbass mod is quite a bit nicer than the stuff I used, they adhere much more strongly which make the pads bond to the headphones completely solid, unless you pop the mounting ring tabs out in which case the tape is not messy at all and just all come off still secure on the undersides of the pads. I've taken the Modulor pads on/off the headphones for about 4 times thus far and the tape is on there solid. Shouldn't need to worry about replacing em unless you take the pads on/off every day for a year.
Comfort
- Again, exceptional. The critical part of the velour top mod that could compromise comfort is the sewing job, as a bad sewing job would make the inner boundary really rough and irritate the skin around your ears after hours of use. That is not the case with these; like I mentioned in one of the photo texts above, I can hardly see or feel the threads, it's like the velour is stock. The pads I modded, on the other hand...lol.
- The thickness is in between pleather pads and velour pads. The minivent foam pieces prop the pads up a little, same with the extra layer of velours, but still far from the nasty thick foam in HFM velour pads. That's of course the same across all fully modded jergpads, so I won't say much more.
Sound
- They sound very, very close to the original jergpads I've been using. A few minor relative differences:
1) sub-bass hits a tad harder, most likely due to the more supple double-sided tape that Modulor included which conducted low frequencies through the earpads better
2) treble seems a tad more present, very slight but I can pick it up. This I think is temporary as the pads are still new and haven't formed to the shape of my head yet; once they do the center part would depress slightly more, thus bringing the drivers closer to my ears and leveling the treble down again
Other than that they sound nigh identical to my modded pads; still that smooth, balanced lush sound with a warm punchy bass and just the right amount of treble.
