gerG
Headphoneus Supremus
Hi gang! Sorry to go missing, but I took 3 months off work to de-stress, get a tan, and obsess about car acoustics. That last one was unplanned, but man have I learned a lot! Those adventures will show up in another thread at some point.
I did not forget headphones, however. How could I? Somewhere along the way I decided to do yet another mod to the poor tortured cable of my Sen 600s. I was ordering parts from Markertek to build a mess of interconnects for a tri-amped system (also another story) and I noticed that the Canare star quad mic cable came in purple. Cheap enough, so I grabbed 25 ft and an extra 1/4" stereo plug.
I cut the stock cables of the 600s about 1.5 feet from the phones for a leader. This allows flexibility, durability, and room for screw-ups. The star quad has 4 individual wires plus a full braided shield, cotton string packing, and a very flexible jacket. Not sure what the individual wire insulation is, but it is rather hard and slippery (PTFE, maybe?).
I did a simple in line overlap solder joint on each wire with shrink tube over each, shrink over the bundle from the headphone end, and an overlap shrink from the Canare end. Entire joint is about 2 inches long, and very tight. The shield is connected only at the plug end. The shield is very dense in this cable, and requires a bit of patience to unbraid. At the splice end a rotary stripper set to just the right depth takes it off without any fuss.
I used lead free solder (silver/tin blend). Takes a bit of practice and a lot of heat, but the joints come out beautiful. In retrospect I should have used a gold plated butt connector and soldered it in. Less tricky that way. I took the time to separate the copper threads from the kevlar in the Sen cable, then used Jan's technique for burning off the insulation. I kept getting dirty joints if I left the kevlar in. One note on that: the detatchable cable makes doing mods a dream. I didn't have to risk yanking the phones off the workbench at all! For added strain relief I zip tied a RS cord clip to the purple part just below the shrink tubing.
The result of this 2 hour (2 scotch) mod is a set of Sen HD600s with a 25 ft purple cable (hence Barney) a real connector, better ergonomics than the Clou that I owned (briefly) and sound that I can't complain about (and you know what a whiner I am). Unfortunately I can't compare it to the stock cable since mine had a bad connector when I bought them, and began mutating from day one.
Since I had the iron heated up I went ahead and added a locking 1/4" jack to my SAC amp (K-1000 companion). fyi, a Neutrik locking 1/4" jack will fit right in place of one of the existing XLR-4 jacks, with one minor flaw: it has to be rotated about 15 degrees off vertical due to a different bolt pattern. A bit unsightly, but one listen makes that a minor issue. Damn that thing sounds good! Thanks to kwkarth for inspiring the mod.
More adventures ahead!
gerG
I did not forget headphones, however. How could I? Somewhere along the way I decided to do yet another mod to the poor tortured cable of my Sen 600s. I was ordering parts from Markertek to build a mess of interconnects for a tri-amped system (also another story) and I noticed that the Canare star quad mic cable came in purple. Cheap enough, so I grabbed 25 ft and an extra 1/4" stereo plug.
I cut the stock cables of the 600s about 1.5 feet from the phones for a leader. This allows flexibility, durability, and room for screw-ups. The star quad has 4 individual wires plus a full braided shield, cotton string packing, and a very flexible jacket. Not sure what the individual wire insulation is, but it is rather hard and slippery (PTFE, maybe?).
I did a simple in line overlap solder joint on each wire with shrink tube over each, shrink over the bundle from the headphone end, and an overlap shrink from the Canare end. Entire joint is about 2 inches long, and very tight. The shield is connected only at the plug end. The shield is very dense in this cable, and requires a bit of patience to unbraid. At the splice end a rotary stripper set to just the right depth takes it off without any fuss.
I used lead free solder (silver/tin blend). Takes a bit of practice and a lot of heat, but the joints come out beautiful. In retrospect I should have used a gold plated butt connector and soldered it in. Less tricky that way. I took the time to separate the copper threads from the kevlar in the Sen cable, then used Jan's technique for burning off the insulation. I kept getting dirty joints if I left the kevlar in. One note on that: the detatchable cable makes doing mods a dream. I didn't have to risk yanking the phones off the workbench at all! For added strain relief I zip tied a RS cord clip to the purple part just below the shrink tubing.
The result of this 2 hour (2 scotch) mod is a set of Sen HD600s with a 25 ft purple cable (hence Barney) a real connector, better ergonomics than the Clou that I owned (briefly) and sound that I can't complain about (and you know what a whiner I am). Unfortunately I can't compare it to the stock cable since mine had a bad connector when I bought them, and began mutating from day one.
Since I had the iron heated up I went ahead and added a locking 1/4" jack to my SAC amp (K-1000 companion). fyi, a Neutrik locking 1/4" jack will fit right in place of one of the existing XLR-4 jacks, with one minor flaw: it has to be rotated about 15 degrees off vertical due to a different bolt pattern. A bit unsightly, but one listen makes that a minor issue. Damn that thing sounds good! Thanks to kwkarth for inspiring the mod.
More adventures ahead!
gerG