Well, today the pair of TS-400 complies that I’ve been using for quite some time with my Noble 6 have started to give signs that they should be changed (becoming a bit too soft, expanding a bit less once inserted etc….).
So, rather than simply changing them and throwing the old ones away, I decided to give a try to an experiment that I read about some time ago: I de-cored the old complies (by hand, it was relatively easy to peel away the foam from the rubbery core, with no need to resort to any tool), and used the foam to “fill up” the blue silicone tips (I reversed the outer dome, exposing the inner blue tube, inserted the de-cored foam over the blue tube, installed the blue tube on the IEMs, put the outer dome back in its place – needless to say, installing the blue tips on the IEMs is a bit more difficult with this kind of mod, but still doable).
Now I’m using the blue silicone tips (padded as described), and, to my ears, they fit well, with a good seal, and I’m quite liking what I’m hearing…
I couldn’t tell you, right now, if I prefer these modded stock tips or not to the comply by themselves (this would require taking off the modded blue tips, installing a fresh set of complies, and doing some A-Bing, which I’m not in the mood for, ATM, given that installing the modded blue tips is not exactly a walk in the park
- doable, as I said, but I have a LOOONG list of things that I prefer to be doing), but my ears definitely prefer them to the other stock tips by themselves (and keeping on changing complies does imply additional costs, of course).
So, those that have decided to buy some complies might want to give this a try, once their first pair decides that it’s time to give up the ghost, before throwing them away
. Oh, and the “mod” is completely reversible, of course.
Needless to say, YMMV (and this mod may work better with the comfort complies – which have a similar “domed” shape to the stock tips – rather than the isolation model).
