kontai69
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2005
- Posts
- 1,009
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- 19
See UPDATE below...
I did these mods to my SR-60s and I thought people maybe interested in seeing the results and learning how they could do it for themselves if they so desired. These mods can also be done to the SR-80, SR-125, as well as the Alessandro MS-1 since they all use the same plastic driver housing.
I first replaced the plastic grill with a wire mesh. I used a silver steel mesh material from a steel mesh drawer organizer box. I found them at Bed Bath and Beyond for $5. I have seen similar items at most office supply stores like Staples. I cut out and shaped two circular disks from the bottom of the mesh box with my Dremel tool and then inserted it in place of the stock plastic one. I used black silicon adhesive to hold it in place. I guess you could also use hot glue like Grado does. The result makes my SR-60 look much like the SR-225. You can look here for various methods on how to crack open the earcups to remove the stock grill...
http://headwize.com/projects/showfil...=grado_prj.htm
With my cans, I was able to pry apart the earcups with just my bare hands. I used a hairdryer to carefully soften the glue around the plastic grills to facilitate their removal. Don't overdue it with the hairdryer as to melt the plastic! You may want to use aluminum foil to "mask" the heat in areas you don't want to expose to heat.
I next made two small blobs (around 1cm in diameter) from black elastomer taken from a sheet of Dynamat Xtreme sound damping material. I applied it to the back of each transducer, being careful not to cover the two tiny holes. You can see the oval-shaped blob in the center of the first pic below, partially obstructed from view by the cable. I was inspired to do this mod when I used to own the RS-1 where I noticed that there was a tar-like material applied at this location. I also used a rolled piece of Dynamat elastomer to hold the two halves of the earcups together. I guess you could hot glue them together if you want.
I also did the coin mod to the stock comfies. I place the pads on a plastic cutting board and firmly pressed a coin (nickel) against the center of the pad. I then used an extremely sharp X-Acto knife with a pointed wedge-shaped blade and made my cut around the edge of the coin. This results in perfect circles.
I'm pretty happy with the overall sound of the modded SR-60: deep tight bass, open sound, treble seems a little rolled off. Most unfortunately, I can't really accurately comment on any sonic effects of the mods since I waited a long time between dismantling my SR-60 to finding a suitable screen material to replace the stock plastic screen. Also, my headband was broken before I did the mods so I couldn't even listen to them properly. I now have a leather unpadded SR-325i replacement headband I bought from Grado, heh-heh.
However, I did A/B compare my modded SR-60 and with a SR-225 at a recent HeadFi meet. The SR-225 had slightly better bass extension and a more neutral clearer midrange. I used modded Senn pads on both. Interestingly, I did not see the popular SR-60 anywhere to do an unmodded comparison.
Here are a couple of pics...
UPDATE (4-23-07): I got hold of a new SR-60 and attempted to mod it as described above. It seems Grado is now using superstrong adhesive (epoxy?) to attach the plastic grills to the cups (as well as the "SR-60" buttons to the grill). With my older SR-60s, everything was hot glued together and can be disassembled after heating with a hairdryer. With the new glue, there seems to be no way to remove the grills without breaking them off and grinding down the leftover plastic from inside the cups. Luckily, the two halves of the earcups are still held together with hot glue.
I did these mods to my SR-60s and I thought people maybe interested in seeing the results and learning how they could do it for themselves if they so desired. These mods can also be done to the SR-80, SR-125, as well as the Alessandro MS-1 since they all use the same plastic driver housing.
I first replaced the plastic grill with a wire mesh. I used a silver steel mesh material from a steel mesh drawer organizer box. I found them at Bed Bath and Beyond for $5. I have seen similar items at most office supply stores like Staples. I cut out and shaped two circular disks from the bottom of the mesh box with my Dremel tool and then inserted it in place of the stock plastic one. I used black silicon adhesive to hold it in place. I guess you could also use hot glue like Grado does. The result makes my SR-60 look much like the SR-225. You can look here for various methods on how to crack open the earcups to remove the stock grill...
http://headwize.com/projects/showfil...=grado_prj.htm
With my cans, I was able to pry apart the earcups with just my bare hands. I used a hairdryer to carefully soften the glue around the plastic grills to facilitate their removal. Don't overdue it with the hairdryer as to melt the plastic! You may want to use aluminum foil to "mask" the heat in areas you don't want to expose to heat.
I next made two small blobs (around 1cm in diameter) from black elastomer taken from a sheet of Dynamat Xtreme sound damping material. I applied it to the back of each transducer, being careful not to cover the two tiny holes. You can see the oval-shaped blob in the center of the first pic below, partially obstructed from view by the cable. I was inspired to do this mod when I used to own the RS-1 where I noticed that there was a tar-like material applied at this location. I also used a rolled piece of Dynamat elastomer to hold the two halves of the earcups together. I guess you could hot glue them together if you want.
I also did the coin mod to the stock comfies. I place the pads on a plastic cutting board and firmly pressed a coin (nickel) against the center of the pad. I then used an extremely sharp X-Acto knife with a pointed wedge-shaped blade and made my cut around the edge of the coin. This results in perfect circles.
I'm pretty happy with the overall sound of the modded SR-60: deep tight bass, open sound, treble seems a little rolled off. Most unfortunately, I can't really accurately comment on any sonic effects of the mods since I waited a long time between dismantling my SR-60 to finding a suitable screen material to replace the stock plastic screen. Also, my headband was broken before I did the mods so I couldn't even listen to them properly. I now have a leather unpadded SR-325i replacement headband I bought from Grado, heh-heh.
However, I did A/B compare my modded SR-60 and with a SR-225 at a recent HeadFi meet. The SR-225 had slightly better bass extension and a more neutral clearer midrange. I used modded Senn pads on both. Interestingly, I did not see the popular SR-60 anywhere to do an unmodded comparison.
Here are a couple of pics...
UPDATE (4-23-07): I got hold of a new SR-60 and attempted to mod it as described above. It seems Grado is now using superstrong adhesive (epoxy?) to attach the plastic grills to the cups (as well as the "SR-60" buttons to the grill). With my older SR-60s, everything was hot glued together and can be disassembled after heating with a hairdryer. With the new glue, there seems to be no way to remove the grills without breaking them off and grinding down the leftover plastic from inside the cups. Luckily, the two halves of the earcups are still held together with hot glue.
