[zero7525]

Quote:

Buy pads that are deep enough? I'll tell you what I'll buy, I'll buy not Grado from the start...maybe I'll buy one for my granny and see what he thinks.

 

 

>>granny
>>he

that's nice

 

[jagerj]

thats where I got confused

 

[Bilavideo]

 

What are the ways to reduce sound leakage?

Here's an easy $4 mod, a pair of large, felt furniture sliders (courtesy of Lowe's).  

It's pretty effective for an ad-hoc solution.

 

[Bilavideo]

FELT DAMPING UPDATE

This is an $8 mod involving small, felt button pads (for the magnet back and back of rear-grill button) as well as a roll of felt liner.  The felt liner had to be cut to the right length and then clipped, in width, a few millimeters, to better facilitate the sliding together of the two halves of the cups.  This mod may not look like much but it makes a very pleasing difference in the sound.  Spikes are smoothed out and the bass feels tighter.  Both effects seem reasonably related to the reduction of inner-chamber resonance.

 

[Bilavideo]

SILVER WIRE MOD
 
I've been eager to test the hype surrounding high-end silver cables.  I've long been something of a fine-wire skeptic.  I have trouble reconciling myself to the idea of paying $500 for interconnects and headphone cables.  Given the right diameter, copper will love you red, but given silver's higher conductivity, there's something attractive about trading in the garden hose for a svelt little light saber.  
 

 
After analyzing the "active ingredients" of the big boys, I'm still skeptical of everything that isn't the actual wire.  I don't care how your mom made up her special batch of silver cabling, just give me 24 AWG 99.99% silver wire, four-braided and wrapped in teflon, with a nylon mesh.  If that doesn't do it, I'll stick with my garden hose.
 

 
Thanks to the kind folks at Homegrown Audio Co., I get to check this out for myself without breaking the bank.  The four-wire braid cost me $47.40.  I couldn't decide on the color of the nylon mesh, so I bought a black one and a clear one for $1.25 each.  With $9.50 for UPS Ground, it cost me a total of $59.40.  (The dirty socks are mine and are not part of the upgrade.)
 

 
With the help of my favorite surly cashier at Radio Shack, I grabbed up some gold-plated connectors to make these cables detachable.  
 

 
I was initially unsure of how I'd tell my wires apart, but since two of the wires are sheathed in silver teflon while the other two are sheathed in white, it makes it easy to assign one color the common ground.

 

[Bilavideo]

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!

THE SILVER MAFIA RULES!!!!
 
I hate to admit I was wrong.  I hate to admit the hype was real - or at least based in something other than a love of jewelry.  I thought after copper, I couldn't love another, but silver is amazing.  The presentation is more open.  Little details pop.  The bass is tight.  All hail superior conductivity!  I'm impressed!
 
Right now, I'm listening to Bob Marley's Three Little Birds and the bass is both kicking and more articulate.  I never realized Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle was such a textured, detail-driven track.  When I die, I want to live in those guitar riffs.  The Fixx's Changing is so crisp, it's hard to believe I'm listening with comfies on.  On Weezer's Freak Me Out, the first verse sounds like this, "City streets at night [cough] can be so intimidating . . . " (I never heard it before.)  The slam on The Cars' Night Spots is like a baseball bat to the skull.  Kiss's Cold Gin sounds practically live.  Avenged Sevenfold's Dear God is mellow but sparkly.  The Clash's "All The Young Punks" is practically holographic.  Grado grit meets the HD800's floating tracks.  Michael Jackson's Human Nature doesn't miss that odd electronic xylophone track hovering over the track.  Dolla's Feelin' Myself comes complete with that sandpaper squish.  You can hear somebody call out at the beginning of Journey's Dead or Alive.  The guitar plucks on Godsmack's Serenity just pop, as does a fret slide I had never heard before some 34 seconds in.  Devo's Working in the Coal Mine has a more palpable echo to its in-studio reverb.  On One Republic's Apology, the cellos just resonate.  Ozzy Osbourne's Mr. Crowley not only shook me with that opening organ but I was again surprised by the illusion of soundstage - on a Grado!  
 
Oh momma.

 

[cowjuan]

oh my god. that looks awesome!

 

[Bilavideo]

Thanks!

 

[baka1969]

woodies! Woodies! Woodies! Woodies!


I bet they'd look sweet with woodies. Great work. It makes me want to start with my 225i but I haven't the courage or skill.

 

[MarcusP]

Let's say I provide the silver cable to a headphone shop. Do you think they can recable it for me?
Or is DIY easier

 

[nickchen]

NoXter & me did the "punch hole mod" on his MS1000 yesterday, great improvement of the bass! Now I am hesitating to rib my MS Pro Ulti apart (again), in order to achieve the same nice slam...

 

[Bilavideo]

 

Let's say I provide the silver cable to a headphone shop. Do you think they can recable it for me?  Or is DIY easier

They'll do it, probably for a fee, though it's not difficult to do this at home.
 
First, order the wire and (if you like) the nylon mesh.  I mentioned the company I went to.  There are others out there.  Shop around.  You can order this wire already braided.  I went with a four-wire braid because it allowed me to divide the common ground wire into two separate grounds.  It may not be a true "balanced" cable, but it does minimize - as much as feasible - the issue of groundwire interference.
 
One consideration is length.  Grado cables are typically 9 or 10 feet long.  To me, this is more wire than I need.  I rarely sit across a room from an audio source.  I use my iPod a lot, so four feet was both cheap and practical.  I also wanted a shorter cable to minimize the length of the signal path.  I doubt an extra foot or two would have had much impact but why pay for more cable than you need?
 
Be sure to use at least two colors for your wire.  It's possible to have four wires with four separate colors but you want at least two.  That way, you can designate two wires as "ground."  When you open up your cups, you'll see a common ground wire with the same color: black.  Just solder your ground wires, then the other two.
 
At the connector, you'll want to make sure you solder the two groundwires to the right connector part.  The long piece at the bottom is the common ground.  Once you have both wires soldered, you can add the wires for the left and right channels.  How do you know which is which?  It doesn't matter.  If you get them mixed up, just unclip the cups from their forks and switch them over.  This is a basically stress-free way of getting it right.
 
There are logistical issues to think about before soldering.  The mesh needs to be the right length.  I just guided my braid through it, then cut off the excess.  I found it easier to draw the braid through from the front than to push it through from the back.  To do this, just pull the sleeve back, the way you might roll up the sleeve of your shirt, either exposing or grabbing the front of the braid and pull it forward.
 
Of equal importance is to make sure you load the right parts in the right order when assembling the connector.  Most connectors have a little shuttle that goes into and sticks out of the outer shell.  This should be the first thing pulled back from the wire, followed by the outer shell, then the plastic overshoe (to keep the connector parts from shorting out from contact with the metal shell).  The front of the connector should obviously be the last item on the line.  If you solder in the groundwires first, you can't go wrong in soldering in the left and right channels.
 

 

[EddieE]

It was quite an obvious thing to do which I hadn't tried but I put my distancers back on my hole punched MS1s last night - wow - quite an effect! Incredible sound stage and bass!
 
I'd pretty much abandoned the distancers when I did the hole punching but now I can see the benefits of both mods in tandem.

 
Quote:

NoXter & me did the "punch hole mod" on his MS1000 yesterday, great improvement of the bass! Now I am hesitating to rib my MS Pro Ulti apart (again), in order to achieve the same nice slam...

 
P.S. This is a fantastic thread Bilavideo! Keep going.
 

 

[MarcusP]

I'm looking to purchase used SR60i or Alessandro MS1. Both of which can use these modding methods and work just as well?

 

[nickchen]

I've got the impression that punch hole mod is quite scaleable, maybe there's a "sweet spot" similar to the 3 drillings of the distancers.
 
Eddie, how much holes did you punch? All of them or just some?