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Step 1: The "Taper Mod"-- Stuff the Ear Pads With Fiberloft[/size]
--Place the flat of your palms firmly up against the ear pad, and applying even, firm pressure, twist the pad counter-clockwise. It will pop out of the assembly.
--You will notice on the underside of the ear pads, there is a little white plastic ring that has notches in it that re-attach the pad to the headphone assembly.
--You will also notice that there is no direct way to access inside the pad where the existing padding is; it's been sewn shut. No problem.
--Take a decent hunk Fiberloft and pull it gently into a longer strip. Roll it between your palms. Take the strip of Fiberloft and stuff it up under the plastic ring into the space between the ring and the existing padding. You will be surprised how much space will open up in there and how much extra material you can get in there.
--At the rear of the pad (the "fatter" end), continue to stuff as much Fiberloft as you can all along the outside edge under the plastic ring; you will need to kneed it and keep pushing it in with your fingers, and eventually you can get a fairly dense and thick layer of material in there.
-- Once you reach the front of the pad (the thinner section), you will want to slowly reduce the amount of Fiberloft you are stuffing under the plastic ring, so it "tapers" gently down until you have a very thin layer of extra padding added to the front vs. the rear which will have as much Fiberloft as you can manage to get in there.
--Why taper it? This causes the drivers to angle slightly away from the ear like the Sony R10 and better Audio-Technicas. This puts the plane of the drivers more in front of your ears and creates a more coherent and seamless soundstage left-to-right. Now sounds seem to come from in front of you as with speakers, rather than having the musicians directly on the left and right hand sides of your head. It also helps move the left and right images closer together in the middle, helping to close the center gap in the soundstage most headphones have.
--Here is a pic of a stuffed pad, an unstuffed pad, and the plastic cup you will need shortly:
--Take your 3" Diameter cup (3 inches across at the top open end), and cut a thin ring off the top of the cup. You will need to also taper this ring, having more height in the rear and less in the front like so:
--Now insert the ring inside the ear pad with the outer lip side down against the fabric. The ring is used to contain the Fiberloft and keep it under the pad where you want it:
--Voila! Your ear pad mods are done. To re-attach, just do the opposite of what you did to take them off. They will click into place. But not yet! We need to access to the rest of the headphone assembly.
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