[goropeza]

I'm guessing that means there is little harm in briefly touching them. I'm not sure how some of the more technical aspects of headphones work so I thought I would ask just in case.

 

[Armaegis]

  Has anyone tried negating a grill entirely, and just reinstalling mesh for the sake of dust protection? It should be the grill, not the mesh, that makes the biggest impact right? I am getting more curious about trying this mod, but I am not clear on which fabrics should be the most acoustically neutral and so on.

 
It's been done before. Just pop off the ring, take out the grill, stretch some mesh over the opening, pop the ring back into place, then carefully trim around the edge. A more secure method would be to glue the mesh down to the ring before putting it back in.
 
Common materials would be speaker grill cloth, or women's pantyhose (nylons).

 

[Derko1]

   
It's been done before. Just pop off the ring, take out the grill, stretch some mesh over the opening, pop the ring back into place, then carefully trim around the edge. A more secure method would be to glue the mesh down to the ring before putting it back in.
 
Common materials would be speaker grill cloth, or women's pantyhose (nylons).

I recently swapped my grills out and was also wondering if this might even be a better option... anyone who has done have any opinions?
 
I'm afraid that the grill itself vibrates and introduces it's own distortion. Since it's not as stiff as the original grill. 
 

 

[Armaegis]

The magnitude of any distortion due to the new grill vibrating is going to be vastly smaller than the distortions caused by reflections of the old grill.

 

[jerg]

  I recently swapped my grills out and was also wondering if this might even be a better option... anyone who has done have any opinions?
 
I'm afraid that the grill itself vibrates and introduces it's own distortion. Since it's not as stiff as the original grill. 
 

 
The grills aren't in front of huge subwoofers, they aren't going to vibrate lol. Not unless they aren't secure in which cause just tuck a bit of whatever material between the securing rings and the grills to really "bolt" them down.

 

[Derko1]

   

Yea... I'm just over thinking it. I figured that there'd still be some sort of distortion introduced when the sound interacts with the less stiff material of the grills. 
 
Still... do you think that there'd be any benefits to going grilless and with simply the fabric covering up? 

 

[jerg]

  Yea... I'm just over thinking it. I figured that there'd still be some sort of distortion introduced when the sound interacts with the less stiff material of the grills. 
 
Still... do you think that there'd be any benefits to going grilless and with simply the fabric covering up? 

Grills are for the sake of mechanical protection of the drivers (e.g. something like a pen poking in accidentally), and no I feel a very open metal grill fares better than very the most porous fabric I've tried in terms of sounding "transparent" relative to absolutely nothing.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

I'll ask again, has anyone tried the grill mod on an HE4? Is it right to assume that ALL Hifiman planar magnetics will benefit from this? Although I take the HE400 benefit the most with the plastic framing.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

Well, I did it to the HE4 with excellent results. The improvement is on par with the HE400 improvement and even more rewarding with the HE4's flat response. Here's a copy in quotes from the other thread, thought I'd post them here.

 

In an attempt to make for a wider soundstage, I pulled the heavy felt off the driver and removed the dust cover on the grill. You can refer to the hifiman grill mod thread here for more info. On the grill mod thread, it just says to remove the star felt. Well you can't just yank it off without using a lot of force so it helps to take the pads off, unscrew the driver and remove the driver from the cup to expose the adhesive tapes used on the felt. You can't completely separate the driver from the cup because of the cable so mind how far your pulling or twisting the driver. Don't want to yank those contacts off and have to bust out the soldering gun.







I also removed the dust cover, the grill mod mentions it playing a roll with treble. One of my fears in doing this was making the treble more pronounced than it already is, which to me is just on the edge on how bright I want my cans to be. On the contrary however, it did just the opposite. It removed the air, which to me is treble from 12-16khz. Some might not like this but if you want the HE4 with a little more relaxed treble, this might be something you want to try. However, the lows and mids get pushed forward and the highs take a back seat (although still with presence). The soundstage gets very slightly wider but the instrument separation does improve where as before the treble seems to mask separation. This could just be me, who sits with the treble-sensitive group. The HE4 still retains its speed but a slight degradation of attack.

What you end up with is a slightly warm HE4 with better instrument separation, better depth, and less treble. Similar to an HE500 but without the thick mids. It can be favorable to some, but I've gotten so used to that airy sound. I may hit an arts/crafts store to find a thinner felt and trace the old one with a slightly larger star pattern. We'll see where it goes, for now I'll give the HE4 as it is some getting used to time.

 

After some listening time to the mods I did last night (removed dust cover, star felt,, and switched to pleather pads) I decided to try the he4 without the grill.

The airy-ness has returned along with a better edge to the sound! My guess is the grill was reflecting some sound or was effecting how the driver moved air. If you have any DIY bone to you I swear you will not be disappointed. Beneath the felt and grill are some drivers dying to breath, taking off them off brings a whole new level of clarity to along with that airy sound. At first listen I had to pick up my jaw from the floor. Loaded up some GnR and sure enough... attack and speed is back with that airy sound. Separation also improves substantially with a more natural soundstage. With the grill on (minus star felt and dust fabric) the sound had a hall-like sound to it, without the grill that doesn't happen.

Also a note to @jerg, not sure if you want to edit the first post but the felt star covering the driver doesn't just come off. To properly take them off I had to separate the driver from the cup to have access to the double sided tape used to hold them on. Trying to yank them off resulted in tearing of the felt. Just a heads up

 

[psychoro]

I just ordered the stuff to do my first mod on my newly acquired HE-500s. And so it begins...

So my stuff arrived and I've got the grills cut out. I'm still not sure which colour dust guard I like best though, so I did a different one on either side to compare.



What do you guys think?

 

[Lohb]

I just ordered the stuff to do my first mod on my newly acquired HE-500s. And so it begins...

So my stuff arrived and I've got the grills cut out. I'm still not sure which colour dust guard I like best though, so I did a different one on either side to compare.



What do you guys think?

Excellent grill pattern vs the parallelogram type that most mod materials seem to have !
Awesome !

 

[Nimzerz]

  Excellent grill pattern vs the parallelogram type that most mod materials seem to have !
Awesome !

AGREED! I'm jealous! Share your source for those wonderful looking grills!!!

 

[acat231]

  Excellent grill pattern vs the parallelogram type that most mod materials seem to have !
Awesome !

The one on the left looks best to me.
 
Rush

 

[ThurstonX]

Nice wide open honeycomb grills.  Both are cool, but if I had to choose, I'd go for the one on the left.  Just something about it...
Nice work.

 

[psychoro]

Yeah I'm leaning towards the black too, it's a close call though cause the copper looks really cool at certain angles.
It is however a lot harder to work with than the black as its fairly flimsy compared. So I'm thinking of possibly changing the copper one over to black tomorrow.