TH909Mod based on Fostex EZ-Simple Mods
- Thread starter Brandfuchs
- Start date
First of all, thanks @Whitigir for his thread and suggestion on moding.
Due to the fact that I'm not an English native speaker, it takes some time for me to sum up and typing the progress of moding.
Also, there might be some inaccurate wording (or maybe quite a lot lolz), feel free to correct me
Due to the fact that I'm not an English native speaker, it takes some time for me to sum up and typing the progress of moding.
Also, there might be some inaccurate wording (or maybe quite a lot lolz), feel free to correct me
The purpose for me to mod TH909 is that I'm not quite satisfied with its bass, and I want to improve it.
I used to have a TH900 mk1, it's a beast of bass and I really like it. However, I'm probably one of the nuts who try to use it for playing some anime songs, which is an extreme feeling (or to say TORTURE!) The highs is truly harsh, it is like uncontrollably becoming higher and higher, filled with spikes; mid just like falling far behind as if the singers' singing under the sea in Atlantis or what, bruhhhh. So I gave up TH900 and changed it for a TH909
Although TH909 has quite a huge improvement on mid and high, mid is much more forwarded and highs is much more under control, it's not a rocket booster anymore (tho sometimes there are still some spikes, but mostly under control), I found it quite disappointing for bass, it's not that punchy and deep anymore, it do has the quantity as TH900, afaic, the depth of bass has been significantly reduced, and the strength of slam is reduced a little bit.
These measures are for the more 'acceptable' tuning for most players, but I just simply want the bass of TH900 back, so I did the moding.
1. Disassemble
The location of screws are exactly the same as TH900, I'm toooo lazy to take the picture so I'd just borrow @Whitigir's lolz.
After removing all the screws, you can see the inside of the 909
As you can see, the driver is quite similar to TH900, as Fostex said, TH909 and TH900 is actually using same driver, it's just the difference between tunning and damping material inside cup.
The only damping material inside TH909 is this cotton ring, unlike TH900, which has a block of cotton.
If you remove the ring, you can truly see the bottom of TH909's cup
You cannot see the grill structure from within, which is quite interesting.... Because when Fostex announced TH909, they said this would be an open back headphone. BUT, actually, the inside is completely sealed, the white damping material is kinda similar to a sort of polymerised cardboard, and it's glued to the bottom of cup. So theoretically, it can upmost be described as a semi-open back headphone rather than an open back headphone
I used to have a TH900 mk1, it's a beast of bass and I really like it. However, I'm probably one of the nuts who try to use it for playing some anime songs, which is an extreme feeling (or to say TORTURE!) The highs is truly harsh, it is like uncontrollably becoming higher and higher, filled with spikes; mid just like falling far behind as if the singers' singing under the sea in Atlantis or what, bruhhhh. So I gave up TH900 and changed it for a TH909
Although TH909 has quite a huge improvement on mid and high, mid is much more forwarded and highs is much more under control, it's not a rocket booster anymore (tho sometimes there are still some spikes, but mostly under control), I found it quite disappointing for bass, it's not that punchy and deep anymore, it do has the quantity as TH900, afaic, the depth of bass has been significantly reduced, and the strength of slam is reduced a little bit.
These measures are for the more 'acceptable' tuning for most players, but I just simply want the bass of TH900 back, so I did the moding.
1. Disassemble
The location of screws are exactly the same as TH900, I'm toooo lazy to take the picture so I'd just borrow @Whitigir's lolz.
After removing all the screws, you can see the inside of the 909
As you can see, the driver is quite similar to TH900, as Fostex said, TH909 and TH900 is actually using same driver, it's just the difference between tunning and damping material inside cup.
The only damping material inside TH909 is this cotton ring, unlike TH900, which has a block of cotton.
If you remove the ring, you can truly see the bottom of TH909's cup
You cannot see the grill structure from within, which is quite interesting.... Because when Fostex announced TH909, they said this would be an open back headphone. BUT, actually, the inside is completely sealed, the white damping material is kinda similar to a sort of polymerised cardboard, and it's glued to the bottom of cup. So theoretically, it can upmost be described as a semi-open back headphone rather than an open back headphone
2. Install tape and damping material
So there are two materials that I used
1. Mundorf Angel Hair
2. 3M Micropre medical tape
Actually, there's a tricky problem for taping cup of TH909:
As you can see, there's a groove originally used for installing cotton, so you really need to use your nail to push the tape inward to ensure it stick at the groove, but the problem is that the elasticity of 3M tape is not good enough to stick at groove firmly.....
Besides, unlike to TH900's moding, you can't simply stick the tape at the bottom because there's a layer of polymerised cardboard, if you just stick the tape on it, you'd probably peel the whole cardboard off when you try to remove the tape later.
In this case, I have to cut the tape in the shape of the round cardboard at the bottom, and then put it reversely on bottom
And then stick other layers of tape on this stuff
After this, put all the stuffs inside
In fact, the thickness of Angel hair does influence sound quite a lot
(I tried to replace the original cotton ring with Mundorf's, but it hardly made any change) ↑
Too little you can hardly hear any difference;
Too much and it would lead to great change in sound, here I put QUITE A LOT Angel hair that I can barely put the cup back to the driver.
Surprisingly, it's not very stuffy, and wouldn't make you feel stifled, the transparency is roughly the same, but, the soundstage is significantly reduced; besides, the gap between different instruments is reduced as well, which is a disaster for instrument separation.
Another strange phenomenon is that, if you put too much angel hair inside, the brightness of vocal would increase somehow, also, spikes of treble would become more obvious.
However, afaic, the bass hasn't been improved quite a lot. So, simply stuffing inside with Angel hair is not enough for improving bass of TH909.
So there are two materials that I used
1. Mundorf Angel Hair
2. 3M Micropre medical tape
Actually, there's a tricky problem for taping cup of TH909:
As you can see, there's a groove originally used for installing cotton, so you really need to use your nail to push the tape inward to ensure it stick at the groove, but the problem is that the elasticity of 3M tape is not good enough to stick at groove firmly.....
Besides, unlike to TH900's moding, you can't simply stick the tape at the bottom because there's a layer of polymerised cardboard, if you just stick the tape on it, you'd probably peel the whole cardboard off when you try to remove the tape later.
In this case, I have to cut the tape in the shape of the round cardboard at the bottom, and then put it reversely on bottom
And then stick other layers of tape on this stuff
After this, put all the stuffs inside
In fact, the thickness of Angel hair does influence sound quite a lot
(I tried to replace the original cotton ring with Mundorf's, but it hardly made any change) ↑
Too little you can hardly hear any difference;
Too much and it would lead to great change in sound, here I put QUITE A LOT Angel hair that I can barely put the cup back to the driver.
Surprisingly, it's not very stuffy, and wouldn't make you feel stifled, the transparency is roughly the same, but, the soundstage is significantly reduced; besides, the gap between different instruments is reduced as well, which is a disaster for instrument separation.
Another strange phenomenon is that, if you put too much angel hair inside, the brightness of vocal would increase somehow, also, spikes of treble would become more obvious.
However, afaic, the bass hasn't been improved quite a lot. So, simply stuffing inside with Angel hair is not enough for improving bass of TH909.
Then, time to tape up the drive
I found this part extremely hard and tricky, the original driver cable is quite stiff, also very tight, the angle for holding the driver is limited, in case of tearing the cable off, I suggest putting a napkin in between driver and desk to gain some friction.
And then tape 3M on the driver
Actually, I found this part of moding affects the bass to the greatest extent. especially for the layer down below, tape it up would tighten the bass, make it be more concentrated and punchy, also improve the reflex of sub-bass.
Taping up the upper would help to wipe out some spikes and sibilant of treble as Whitigir suggested.
3. Weighting
In fact, if you only tape up the cup and driver without putting damping material inside, you can ignore this step.
I did this because last time I put different amounts of Angel hair inside and caused unbalance on sounding.
And that's it!
After the moding, TH909 is sounding far better than the stock one, although bass, still not as deep and punchy as TH900, but now you can feel the dive of bass, and it's more condensed and powerful than it used to be.
The sibilants around 6k-8kHz have been mostly eliminated.
Nuance and detail have become clearer.
The only problem is that soundstage has been reduced a bit, I'm not sure if this is because TH909's cup is already small enough, and this mod reduce the space inside further more, or it's for other reasons. Anyway, I think the tradeoff in this mod is worthy, since the bass has actually improved
At last, thank you for browsing through, also especially thanks for Whitigir, a tape that could make such a great change is totally out of my expectation!
Feel free to give your suggestion and opinion!
Feel free to give your suggestion and opinion!
Well, what can I say...
Users who are viewing this thread
