This is sort of a spin-off to the restoration job I did on Denon AH-D7100:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the...dphone-mods-here.867426/page-28#post-15470449
Over a year ago I bought Audio-Technica ath-w10vtg. It's a piece of headphone history. It was released 1996 and it is the first wooden headphone Audio-Technica ever made. I'm not sure but I think only Sony R10 predates it in the wooden headphone category. Only 3000 were made. It's not a super sought after headphone but I think it still goes for about $300-400 used. I paid like 1/10 of that because of the poor condition. Poor condition is actually bit of an understatement...
Atleast one of the drivers is broken. Cable is torn, jack is broken, foam parts have detoriated, pleather on 3d wing pads has peeled off and there are no earpads. There was sticky black gunk everywhere from the rotting foam and glue. Earcups were surprisingly good considering the overall condition but there are scratches, dents and one big cut that goes all the way through the coating.
After cleaning the headphones and dissassembled them I started looking for a replacement driver. Original drivers were 53mm and unfortunately I only had couple of 53mm drivers stored, neither good enough for this project. I contacted Audio-Technica but they refused sell any of their drivers. Using some of their new drivers would have been nice. I tried the well known Peerles Tymphany driver but as it is 50mm it just went through the driver hole. Then I gave a shot to those D7100 drivers I had left from the previous project. Those are slightly larger than most 50mm drivers so I was able to fit them. I had to push the driver towards one end of the hole and then seal the crack on the other side. Luckily crack was really small, barely visible without shining a light through it. That weird cage thing holds the driver in place firmly.
Now that I had the drivers I wired the whole thing together. Since the original fixed cable is broken I went with detachable 3.5mm cable. Socket was easy to fit in the original cable entry hole. I think the golden socket matches well with the gold text on the cups and headband. Because I was eager to hear if the whole thing even makes a sound I just soldered the cables I left on the drivers directly to the cable that goes through the headband. I thought about replacing the cable but since I detected no oddities with the sound I just let it be. Maybe I get back to that on a later time.
Next I wanted to fix the 3d wing pads that had pleather peeled of and flattened foam. That modification is explained here.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hel...g-head-pads-replacement.931886/#post-16050498
Next up was the restoration of the cups. I would have sanded, painted and varnished those cups but lettering is on the top layer. With one cup I got rid of most blemishes with two layers of spray on varnish. The cup with big scratch was more difficult. I tried red market and nail polish but those were too dark. I settled for a paint I had which is too translucent but the tone is right. It was bit of a pain trying to paint it without covering the letters. When paint was dry I cut out The bulging paint with a very sharp carpet knive blade. After that I tried fixing the damaged letters with gold color marker. Did not really work out but it's better than without IMO. I think both cups turned out pretty good. There is some "orange skin" effect on close inspection when light hits it on certain angles. I thought about buying polishing equipment but I have more important use for my money now. That damaged area does not look good but it is no longer an eye-catcher.
Now that I had the exterior parts done and everything wired I finally got to the part about making them sound right. Without any mods there was alot of bass, big 10-15db dip at 400hz and way way too much treble. I tried different pads but none itself fixed the problems. I chose Fostex th900 pads that I bought from aliexpress. Those are very stiff so not the most comfortable. Sound was not too bad and of the pads I have those look the best. Shame I had no audio-technica pads that look like originals but it is a part denon now anyway so stock pads would not propably sound good.
It took me about 10-15hours of testing to get where I'm now. Without measuring equipment it would have taken days. I tried alot of different materials and variations. I won't go into detail but I took pictures. Dense white stuff is magic sponge. Great stuff and super easy to work with. Black foam that looks like original, I cut it from a headphone box. Fabric is some packaging material that looks like oil absorbing carpet. "Polyfill" is just some stuff that came out off my sofa
I felt a bit stupid stuffing the cups fully of everything but it works. Original d7100 cups have little space so I suppose that driver can operate well without much air behind it. Final tuning is done with tape on the baffle. Going fully sealed to open changes the upper midrange +/- 15db. Bass , low mids and treble are mostly unaffected.
I might still tweak it but this is what I got now. Hd650 for reference.
It sounds pretty good. No worse than most $300 closed back headphones out there. There is some problems with channel balance with bass but image is centered.
I still need to build driver covers for it. Because of the angled design it's bit tricky. I'll propably source some mesh from an old radio, sieve or something..
