[GREQ]

Woah! I commissioned this headband from you back in 2013 (Just dug up my DMs). It's been 8 years, totally forgot haha.

It worked well for the Hifiman HE-500s I had back then, but was in cold storage until my recent venture into these headphones.

Did you make any more of these since summer 2013?

----

Re: giving up on papercone dynamics - I did buy a few other 70s Japanese pairs of other brands/makes out of hope that they'd also be diamonds in the rough, but they all sounded unrecoverable. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case most of the time. These have been an outlier in my limited venture thus far.

Re: pads - they are generic 105 mm velour earpads I found on amzn/ebay; padrolled a bit and these stood out in terms of correctly tuning these particular headphones.

Nah didn't make any more. I only showed it off in case people wanted to try making their own.
Then people actually started asking to buy one, so I just made them until I ran out of materials.
Shortly after that eb@y was flooded with various alternatives so people stopped asking for them anyway.

 

[jerg]

Nah didn't make any more. I only showed it off in case people wanted to try making their own.
Then people actually started asking to buy one, so I just made them until I ran out of materials.
Shortly after that eb@y was flooded with various alternatives so people stopped asking for them anyway.

Interesting! I think that Ebay flooding of headphone suspension straps has long since died out lol. Same with Amazon. I guess it was a phase.

 

[tascamtascam]

Beyerdynamic DT880 Edition 2003

 

[Jose Hidalgo]

Sony MDR-CD1000 from 1994 or so, with brand new earpads and of cours its bio-cellulose drivers.

It still works (surprisingly well actually), but it hasn't aged so well. You can't see it but he suspension strap is distended, to the point that I have to hang it with the headband, which I don't do with my other headphones. I'm a very careful person, but this didn't happen because of me, it's just aging.

I wish I could find a proper frequency response plot for this headphone, and/or EQ settings. Oratory and AutoEQ don't have it. And the MDR-CD1000 topic on Head-Fi is dead since 2014. Any hints ?

 

[Bingturong]

How about something that hasn't even been shown yet? And a Denon TOTL from the 90s no less~ I present the AH-D930.

 

[CJG888]

Presumably manufactured by Foster?

 

[GREQ]

Presumably manufactured by Foster?

Not this one.
I think that partnership started with the D2000/5000/7000 series.

 

[tascamtascam]

Beyerdynamic DT200

 

[CJG888]

50 Ohm? Unusual.

 

[Yoshirou]

Beyerdynamic DT200

Ive started to collect vintage Beyerdynamic headphones, let me know if these DT200's are ever for sale. Also where did you find them?

 

[tascamtascam]

Ive started to collect vintage Beyerdynamic headphones, let me know if these DT200's are ever for sale. Also where did you find them?

I got this Beyer DT200 from Japan.

 

[nofarewell]

Well, there's plenty of hype and misconeption around the CD1700.
As far as I know, there are 3 different versions.

The oldest version apparently uses MDR-CD3000 drivers - I havn't even seen photos online proving the existance of these.
Apparently they are the holy-grail CD1700, which some say sound closest to MDR-R10 compared to anything else ever.
Whether they actually exist or not is open to debate at this point... it's also possible old images have been wiped from dead image hosting websites.

The other two versions use variants of the "CD1700" driver.
One version has a black magnet housings and black baffle paper filters. Also with a white paper ring filter around the front of the driver, just like the MDR-V900.
The other version has a 'metallic' coloured magnet housing and only white paper baffle filters, and NO driver side filter.

Mine is the last variant (that I know of) with no front filter, and it sounds and measures objectively rather well.
I actually really like it as the bass rolloff and smooth treble provides an all-day non-fatigue sound.

It is outclassed technically by modern flagships as it's missing sub-bass and is a touch soft in the treble, but has a nice medium-sized soundstage which is already 'HUGE' for a closed-back... but still not as big a soundstage as the HA-DX1000.... but still perhaps bigger staging than the Focal Stellia (for example).

I'm fairly confident with the build quality... it's the same plastic as any other Sony of the era, but because everything is XXL sized, it feels more confident in the hand, and much less likely to break.
My only concern is the suspension headband, which extends on spring-loaded rollers ... which is insanely cool, but could become a weak point over time.

Sorry to dig this out again now, but my CD1700s have just arrived and I'm interested if you know any indicators whether it is the CD3000 driver version. On the box, drivers, anything that could confirm this? Thanks

 

[nofarewell]

The ECR-800 is well known for being frankly a bizarrely made piece of equipment. Apparently Sony engineer's thought that the color of the cable on the direction of the signal would improve the sound, that and apparently the cable contained some sort of goo. Even stranger is the driver design which is still unique to this day. I have the ECR-400 in storage, the older and smaller brother and they sound quite decent. Better than a regular dynamic of the day but still no match for a Stax. I did remember it sounding very boring.

I wasn't referring to the new MDR-Z series but rather the older DR-Z series which was Sony's top of the line from 78-81 consisting of the DR-Z5, Z6 and Z7


I have the DR-Z6. It sounded actually really good but I couldn't get a good impression since one of the drivers failed. I got a replacement driver but that was more or less demolished by my father who took it upon himself to replace the old driver. From experience from other members of the forum the Z6 specifically is cursed. The difference between the headphones apart from cosmetics were the different amount of palladium coating with the Z5 having none, Z6 having a bit and Z7 of course being heavily coated. Actually the reason why they were so short lived as a series was that in 1981 the price of palladium skyrocketed.

Of the cassette era there was the headphone line of the HAIR series such as the MDR-5a and MDR-7 but even rarer was HAIR pro and HAIR Hi-Fi with the range topping MDR-CD7

Rare as **** and I only have ever seen one for sale, went for the equivalent of over 1000usd.

Of course there's also the bigger brother, the MDR-CD900


Mind you this was granddaddy of the MDR-CD and MDR-V series. And It came out in 1985! Rare but findable and not at too ridiculous a price. There is a toned down, often confused variant known as the MDR-CD900ST which is still being produced to this day for Sony Music Japan. I have a pair and let's just say it's one of the very few, to my ears, dynamics that can compete with the detail of electrostatics.

I have a few walkmans as well, mostly from a lot when I was trying to track down one for my sister. She has a WM-EX2 and I still have the others in storage. Most significant of them being a WM-2 though it needed a belt replacement.

An MDR-CD6, which should be the absolute pinnacle of the Sony lightweight headband series is coming here soon. I think it is supposed to be better than the CD7, by the specs, it is.

 

[nick n]

Part of the quoted section above, about the ECR-800 needs some additional clarification.

The Sony engineers didn't simply guess the brown cable sounded better than a black equivalent cable.
They knew it did, from direct testing and listening trials.
Their thinking about why it did sound better was based upon the best possible hypothesis,
which was the additional carbon in the cable's black coating was the culprit.
( "carbon black" added during cable manufacturing to colour the cable black obviously )
Since it had a low capacitance cable ideally/likely ( being a full bias electrostat most do ) that could have been more audible than otherwise.

There was no additional goo in the cables that was added.
Many of them did turn to gooey messes over time as the cable "rubber" deteriorated.
Must have been an unstable compound with a poor shelf life.
This could account for why there are literally under a handful known to survive, that I am aware of anyhow.
People probably threw them out over time because of the rotting cables.
Assuming the wires inside didn't arc out and somehow fry the drivers as they fell apart (???)


There was however "goo" used in the metal cups themselves.
This was a viscoelastic gel "goo" put into thin chambers around the periphery of the cups edges.
Used for vibration treatment.

Granted there was some odd thinking, in that the reason the sides of the adapter-amp unit are a burnt orange colour
is that they thought that paint colour affected the sound in a positive way as well.


Just some fun extra info.


Greatly look forward to impressions on those CD-6.

Ohhh did you get those CD1700 that were with their original minty looking box a bit ago?

 

[nofarewell]

Greatly look forward to impressions on those CD-6.

Ohhh did you get those CD1700 that were with their original minty looking box a bit ago?

I'll share them and yes, I think it's that CD1700. Ebay UK sale. Do you happen to know anything about the enigmatic CD1700 revisions/signs regarding their age/type?