All right, it's time to post the orthodynamicization of my Grandfather's old Realistic Nova Pros.
I have no ideas if these suckers ever sounded good, but I suspect not. I found them in the workshop, where my Grandfather had been using them for ear mufflers--he had sliced the cord off at the cups and the drivers were half ripped out. The cups, pads, and headband were in great shape, though, so I took them apart to see if there was anything that could be done for them.
There were a few challenges. The cups are ported, but there weren't any holes in the baffle. The biggest issue is the fact that the cups are enormous, especially for a relatively small planar driver.
The good news: the holes in the baffle are the perfect size to fit the holes of the SFI drivers, but small enough that they could be glued in place, sealed to the baffle.
So here's what I tried:
First, I needed to shrink that cup without blocking the ports and without adding tons of weight. I settled on some closed-cell weather stripping tape, with some blu-tack covering the now non-functional volume controls. I used three strips, one flat and the others along the angled sides. I covered the flat one with a piece of felt to prevent too much reflection back into the driver. These cups don't need as much dampening as some, since they are such heavy-gauge plastic, but I figure the weather stripping should also prevent any resonance problems at the same time.
For the baffles, I started by drilling two very small port holes. After that, I filled the gaps along the edge with blutack for dampening, then attached the driver with contact cement. I added some blutack around the driver for good measure and to make sure there weren't any additional gaps for air to get through. I filled any other cable gaps with more blutack, then wired up the drivers using the original cables between the drivers, and making the main cable with a gold-plated headphone extension cable.
I covered the bare drivers with extremely thin layers of cotton for dust protection, but left them undamped otherwise. Initially, I loaded up the rest of the cups with some polyester quilt batting, but it made them sound a bit too muffled and closed. For right now, the goal is to emulate as closely as possible the design of my modded T50RPs. Since these pictures, I've also put a reflex dot on the middle of both drivers on both sides--that's how they arrived to me, and it does help them sound better.
At any rate, the quality of the sound is well beyond what I reasonably expected. They sound fantastic.
They aren't the most detailed othos I've heard, but they do have a really clear, smooth midrange. They work quite well with vocals. They are nice and bright, with good, clear treble extension--among the best I've heard from ortho drivers so far. Best of all, though, there is bass. Clear, rich bass that doesn't start to fade until about 30hz. As with most orthos, the soundstage isn't particularly wide, but there's great imaging and separation.
At any rate, if the T50RP are a great deal for just over $70, these are even better at the roughly $25 I put into them. I'm definitely looking forward to the arrival of the rest of my SFI drivers--this is turning into an addictive hobby.
