Well finally got annoyed enough with the stock "domino" 5 pin plug on these
HOK80-2 to do a recable. I think I lost my crap-tastic adapter somewhere.
Stock form these in my opinion are over-damped a bit.
They sound decent stock but there is a lot more to be had with some effort.
The main reason I had these out for modding tonight was because yesterday I took the original model HOK80 ( V1 ) out for a walk.
Not bad...better than I remembered.
Then I threw on the impedance switch to high, the gain switch to high and bass boost on the portable amp seen in the picture ( it's a C&C XO2 @ 1 watt per channel )
Whoa.
I can't for the life of me recall what I did inside them except seal up the baffle holes where the tabs are, and some inner damping.
Since I had such great success with the Yamaha HP-50, plus other people's hearing and impressions to back me up on that mod scheme, I figured I would duplicate that in these HOK80-2.
No matter what * most times
due to the opening process tabs are likely to break. These use 4 clip-tabs you need to pry back and then as ericj mentioned put some pennies in as spacers.
then work around until it comes out.
Inside that is a really goofy plastic ring that holds things in place stock. Tapered on the outside.
You really need to pay attention to this ring as it has 4 outer slots corresponding to the tabs, then one inner where it allows the cable to emerge from inside the ring and be clamped in place.
Since I went with some Furutech F35 fancy headphone cable I had to avoid wrapping the cable around the driver edges like stock, it was simply too thick to use with the ring like that
Replacing everything is really a total pain too as the ring needs to be kept in place as much as possible, plus it tends to move around during seating everything.
I did like the
stock form =====
but it really needs some serious power behind it and as I stated it seems stifled in the bass areas with the original grey wool damping puck.
So the HP-50A mod I used here involves getting 30D Sorbothane around the driver rears but here the driver holes go to the very edges so I had to put it on the baffle rear all around right at the driver edges.
Next
to allow bass to throw better and not be immediately stifled and lessened, I put a disc spacer of the Hobbs Rough Silk quilt batting right on the driver rears.
Over top of that I put a disc of Arctic Cotton ( %100 cotton one ) for final damping and some reflecting as well.
I might swap that out for another spacer and %80 cotton batting, still testing.
Then simply reused the thin white spacer foam.
***Other tweaks include removing the stock plastic rear disc to convert them from closed to open ( it drops right out ),
and using a hobby knife to slice a bit of the cup edges where the headband pivots horizontally in ( it was catching those edges and clunking a bit )
and of course using some thin strips of Dynamat ( blue and silver version ) to secure the driver down fully ( stock form they are totally loose and simply held by the ring and cable wrap.)
For future reference the HOK80-2 driver polarity is
center tab on the driver is +,
outer edges are -.
Much thanks to wualta for that.
HUGE difference. I though one time the bass boost was still on but nope. Anyhow getting used to this fist mod to see what I want to change if anything.
Not fun to open up.
Lettin' dat
FURUTECH FHD-35 cable burn-in lol !
One thing I keep noticing is that many of my old mods that used the old traditional direct driver damping with heavier materials ( felts, quilt batting, wool pads etc )
always sounded...
welll... just ~not right.
Held back somewhat.
This spacer method really seems to work well for me.
I know this might be not common traditional thinking, these are damped in a sense though, just not immediate, and not as heavily smothered. When I get the same results across multiple items with that effect it tells me what I need to do ( HP-1 is done also like the HP-50A )
This tells me the bass needs more room to throw.
^ 45/46 mm drivers , heck yeah look at those copper traces
click for a nice closeup look !
You can see the broken outer edge of the baffle right at one of the tabs, almost unavoidable.
^ that darned ring see the outer notches to line up with the slot on the press tabs, and also the small inner side single notch to line up with the cable exit.
First and hopefully last mod result.
Neutrik 6.3 trs, FHD-35 cable, softy 3rd party HD25 pads that need no taping they snung tight right over the baffle edges.
ONGOING... isn't it always.
BTW if this page hits page 5 again I will be mad.
