[EddieE]

Tried something new on my HP-50S last night.

I've been having a lot of trouble taming the bass on mine, they pump out so much of it, especially mid-bass which was overwhelming everything and butchering male vocals.

I tried taking the stock foam out and bluetacking the driver to the baffle to keep the low-end bass (thanks for the tip Kabeer), but I had trouble keeping it stuck with out having the extra height of the blue tack itself mess up the fit, and the phones weren't closing properly.

Even when I did manage to close them the mid bass was still all over the place, so abandoned it when I had another idea...

What I have found works better (and this is only one first impressions, I'm discovering with these that what sounds great when I've just done it often impresses a lot less when you come back later) is to take the circles which were left over from quarter modding my Grado comfies and placing them over the backs of the drivers. It was luckily a perfect fit.

Underneath these (against the felt at the back) I placed the white filters which were originally in front of the driver and behind the baffle of the stock HP-50S. This is porous, but very thick, it really helps the mids and treble, or so it seems on first listen.

These are just very bassy headphones and that hasn't changed, but the balance is getting better.

What it really has achieved is more "air" and separation than i have managed yet with these. All other solutions required the cups to be pretty much full with material, whether that was the stock foam holding things in place, or felt.

The foam compresses between the felt on the back of the cup and the driver and holds the driver in place well, but still leaves a little area of open air space inside the cup which makes the sound a lot more open.

As I said, I won't make a final judgement on this until I listen back with some space between, but I feel like this definitely positive progress.

 

[iQEM]

@ EddieE:
you should try micropore/transpore covering the magnet holes and remove the blutak and place a sandwich of various density felt or using rockwool...

 

[EddieE]

iQEM,
Have some micropore on already [EDIT - I guess I could add more micropore, it's currently covering about a third of the holes on each driver] have also got rid of the blutack (it was stopping them from closing properly). I only had one type of felt, but I have felt in there.

The mid bass was still untamable, although it seems to be getting better with this method.

What's rock wool though?

 

[iQEM]

here's the one...
Mineral wool - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Kabeer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EddieE /img/forum/go_quote.gif iQEM, Have some micropore on already have also got rid of the blutack (it was stopping them from closing properly). I only had one type of felt, but I have felt in there. The mid bass was still untamable, although it seems to be getting better with this method. What's rock wool though?

The blutack 'gasket', you need to make it thin. You can either gasket it around the side edges of the driver to the small driver recess walls. or make say a 1/2-1/3rd mm thickness layer blutak ring for the interface.

Midbass. You may have one of those V.bassy variants. In which case your gonna need DENSE felt, look for thin and v.dense wool cashmere blend, like in ludoos damping guide, and damp the vents with that. and damp the driver with it too.
But the key is this, you neeed the felt to be v.tight, or even sealing to the driver. You understood this now i guess when you said you use that grado cushion to push the felt on the driver.
What you are doing is making sure the bass cant "fart" out of the initial damping layers edges that much. (if you make the initial damping layer larger than the driver diameter it should stop the farting)

Rockwool is kinda like the stuff in roof insulation (its a skin irritant so careful).

 

[EddieE]

Thanks again Kabeer, and iQEM,

Will give the blu tack another go next time I get them open.

Any place in the UK you know that sells the dense felt you're talking about?

 

[Kabeer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EddieE /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks again Kabeer, and iQEM, Will give the blu tack another go next time I get them open. Any place in the UK you know that sells the dense felt you're talking about?

Im not sure dude I got a small biit from italy a while back.
What i know is its the wool they use for jackets.

(well in this case specifically milatary jackets). So looking down something like that would be good.

This particular wool was wool/cashmerer blend, thin black. And the brand was "Moorbrook". But I think any other similar thing would do fine.

 

[sachu]

It was inevitable..I am once again a owner of the venerable Wharfedale Isodynamic. I am ecstatic!!
I have a pair of zebra wood donor phones at hand as well thanks to boomy3555 to transplant the drivers into. I guess I'll have to go knocking Don's door soon enough for some tips on making this into the TP beater that he created.

 

[smeggy]

Congrats, dammit! Now I want a set of those zebra whatknots too.

 

[Sambones]

Hi, a while ago I mentioned that my T20's died. I finally got around attempt to see if I could fix it. It appears that the wire attaching the membrane to the ring was severed. To answer this, my thought was to use arctic silver, which is a liquid conductor for use as a thermal-contact paste, but it also conducts electricity quite well (it's about 98% synthetic silver), and dab a bit on the diaphragm, to recreate the connection. Does anyone know of a reason I should not do this? Is there a non-conductive coat over the contacts?

 

[rhythmdevils]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sachu /img/forum/go_quote.gif It was inevitable..I am once again a owner of the venerable Wharfedale Isodynamic. I am ecstatic!! I have a pair of zebra wood donor phones at hand as well thanks to boomy3555 to transplant the drivers into. I guess I'll have to go knocking Don's door soon enough for some tips on making this into the TP beater that he created.

nice. Now I'm glad I didn't have a chance to bid on those. That would have been lame if we were bidding the price up against each other!

 

[Ishcabible]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sachu /img/forum/go_quote.gif It was inevitable..I am once again a owner of the venerable Wharfedale Isodynamic. I am ecstatic!! I have a pair of zebra wood donor phones at hand as well thanks to boomy3555 to transplant the drivers into. I guess I'll have to go knocking Don's door soon enough for some tips on making this into the TP beater that he created.

Gah, I went here to complain about how low those went, especially since I could have paid a good amount more, but good to know they went into good hands!

 

[wualta]

Congrats, Sachu. They're landmark headphones, all right, and exponents of the school of design Douglas Adams called "excitingly chunky". And now we know that a former Acoustical Manufacturing Company (QUAD to you youngsters) employee named John Collinson led the design team for what became the Wharfedale Isodynamic. Collinson went on to co-found Castle Acoustics, which, like many other beloved old English audio brands, has been bought, sold, merged, resold and finally conglomerated beyond recognition. But it's nice to know that a real planar guy led the team back then. He knew what could be done and what it should sound like and went straight for it.

It occurs to me to ask whether any of you who've become buddies with Fang or Alex or Sankar have asked them if they'd ever owned (or even heard) the old classics like the Wharfedales before getting into the exciting, dangerous headphone manufacturing biz.
.

 

[Sambones]

Hey, I guess they're not all that special, but I just won a pair of NOS Realistic Pro 30's. These guys are in immaculate condition.
 
And, yeah, congratulations on the find, Sachu. I'm really jealous of all you ninjas, I seem unable to find anything truly remarkable. These pro 30's are about the best I've done so far.

 

[Faust2D]

All these new orthos on the market now, do we have detailed impressions of how they compare to Ortho thread favorites and & other TOL orthos, as well as Stax phones. I am seriously considering maybe selling some stuff and getting some of these new things