Cruelhand Luke
Headphoneus Supremus
I bought these fantastic vintage Pioneers at the swap meet for $10.00. They sound great...but also pretty shot-out. Good sound mired by crackling ... from? The drivers, the old wiring? I don't know for sure
The drivers are 45mm capsule type, mylar. The mylar is pretty tacky/covered in lint and peeling and generally messed up...I am looking for cheap driver alternatives. Ideally I'd like to just swap out the capsule, but the housing is so voluminous (actually designed to house multiple drivers) that I have the option of grafting drivers into the housing as well. It seems like 40mm is much easier to come by
Right now I am considering the drivers from:
Philips SHL 3300 (they get good reviews as far as having good sounding drivers in a kind of crappy headband/fixed cable design ....I've seen them for $10.00...but $15.00 is probably realistic)
Koss KSC75 (of course)..I think the whole shebang can just be dropped into the housing with some minor dremeling here and there (I don't know how that will sound though, since it would be a very different configuration from stock. IE drivers closer to the ears and more 'air' around the drivers)
I don't know how easy the drivers are to extract from the housing.
since y'all got me into this mess of buying headphones and then dismantling them and all that madness....you need to help get me out.
What other possible driver transplants might make sense? I want to keep this fairly inexpensive...at least to start out. I have a feeling that a big part of why these headphones sound so good is the cups...I think a decent replacement driver will sound good in them...but I don't want to spend a bunch of money and find out I'm wrong.
Besides the Koss, the SHL3300...are there other budget headphones with drivers worth scavenging? Or maybe readily available/easily swappable drivers? I saw AKG k240 drivers for $20 each.
Heck, does anyone know how I could get NOS Pioneer drivers?
Any ideas would be appreciated. I am working on a review of the headphones in stock form...kind of hard to do accurately considering the work that needs to be done...it's like having an old Alfa Romeo...but they have a really smooth/warm/laid back sound that is enjoyable and really listenable, which is why I am interested in doing a kind of resto-mod on them, I think they have a lot of potential.
The drivers are 45mm capsule type, mylar. The mylar is pretty tacky/covered in lint and peeling and generally messed up...I am looking for cheap driver alternatives. Ideally I'd like to just swap out the capsule, but the housing is so voluminous (actually designed to house multiple drivers) that I have the option of grafting drivers into the housing as well. It seems like 40mm is much easier to come by
Right now I am considering the drivers from:
Philips SHL 3300 (they get good reviews as far as having good sounding drivers in a kind of crappy headband/fixed cable design ....I've seen them for $10.00...but $15.00 is probably realistic)
Koss KSC75 (of course)..I think the whole shebang can just be dropped into the housing with some minor dremeling here and there (I don't know how that will sound though, since it would be a very different configuration from stock. IE drivers closer to the ears and more 'air' around the drivers)
I don't know how easy the drivers are to extract from the housing.
since y'all got me into this mess of buying headphones and then dismantling them and all that madness....you need to help get me out.
What other possible driver transplants might make sense? I want to keep this fairly inexpensive...at least to start out. I have a feeling that a big part of why these headphones sound so good is the cups...I think a decent replacement driver will sound good in them...but I don't want to spend a bunch of money and find out I'm wrong.
Besides the Koss, the SHL3300...are there other budget headphones with drivers worth scavenging? Or maybe readily available/easily swappable drivers? I saw AKG k240 drivers for $20 each.
Heck, does anyone know how I could get NOS Pioneer drivers?
Any ideas would be appreciated. I am working on a review of the headphones in stock form...kind of hard to do accurately considering the work that needs to be done...it's like having an old Alfa Romeo...but they have a really smooth/warm/laid back sound that is enjoyable and really listenable, which is why I am interested in doing a kind of resto-mod on them, I think they have a lot of potential.
