[Melvins]

HOW DOES ONE DO THESE THINGS

 

[sml1226]

Read up on Bill's SR-60 Mod thread. It cover's just about anything you can think of if you look through it all.

 

[Maverickmonk]

A good many of these thigns are described in this thread:
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/508459/sr60-mod
 
Its a lot of reading, but you will see just how much you can do to your grado, from following the basic mods that Bill has come up with, to going all out and making creatures of which the only original part is the driver. Its a fun trip. Theres also a pictures thread where other users have posted their grado creations. Its a fun trip. I enjoy the hours of tinkering ALMOST as much as I enjoy the sound the headphones make.

 

[Melvins]

Yeah I've seen it. Care to give the highlights? Basically since I have zero cash and CANNOT break these bad boys, a lot of that stuff just doesn't seem to be worth the risk.

 

[Maverickmonk]

Cup opening/ blutacking the driver is as close to 0 risk as you can get, along with trying different pads (quarter modded Senn hd414 pads are my favorite balance of sound quality and comfort...but I tried to dye them black and now the dye doesn't stick and they turn my ears black...fail. dying things IS risky apparently). Opening up the drivers is very low risk, as a light amount of heat form a blow dryer (not heat gun...that would be bad. garden variety blow drier) melts the hot glue holding them together, and a spoon handle (i wrapped mine in paper towel so as not to mar the cups) is placed flat side towards the groove left after pulling the pad off, and pulling from narrow end (next to the "bowl" end of the spoon" to the wider handle, slowly forcing the "lid" of the cup off. once that's off. blutack/foam/dynamat on the magnet to help dampen vibrations and absorb sound reflections helps and isn't permanent. I would advise NOT trying to take the button off, as I was unable to get the "SR60" label button off without taking off the stock grill in pieces. to dampen the reflections it bounces back toward the driver, you could put a piece of round felt on inside side of the button as well.
 
venting the driver holes is also low risk, but it CAN be a little more risky. use a ballpoint pen (preferably a wide-ish one) to poke the holes (as many or few as you desire, try a few and see how you like it before adding more, the more holes, the more bass, I prefer 2-4 holes of the 10). the plastic part behind the "ball point" of the ballpoint pen will act like a shield to prevent the pen from intruding too far into the driver area, which could result in deforming/puncturing the driver (so don't use a needle or something like that, because you don't have that safety there).
 
if you want a "closer" sound with the highs, you can remove the white cloth that covers the front of the driver. the only danger in doing this is if you push the knife/tweezers/whatever you use to get the cloth off into the holes it covers, you could again puncture the driver. you also have to meticulously pull the strings out of the driver housing.
 
full driver liberation is apparently more hazardous (I haven't done it), and re cabling can be too if you don't have soldering experience.
 
 
Oh, you can quarter-mod the stock pads too to help get a "closer" feel for the music, if that's what you want. Its all up to your taste. most of these mods are reversible, for instance, if you decide you want fewer holes, you can cover them back up, etc.

 

[Melvins]

thanks man, what's blu tacking the driver?

 

[Maverickmonk]

hard surfaces can interfere with sound in 2 ways, they can resonate and they can reflect airborn soundwaves. one of the flat hard surfaces in almost any dynamic setup is the back of the driver, which holds a round magnetic plate. If this plater were to begin resonating (say, if its harmonic frequency were present in a section of music itwas reproducing) it could impart a resonance of its own, causing there to be too much "noise" at that frequency. The easiest way to make hard objects stop resonating is to hold them in place. Think of how that rattle on your car window stops when you put your hand on it. The extra mass + the non-rigidity of that mass makes it not vibrate as much. Also, the hard surface of the magnet can reflect soundwaves what enter the rear chamber of the headphones back. these reflections can create an ammount of distortion in music, and make certain frequencies seem wrongly "colored" (how color applies to music I still don't understand...) to stop this from happening, you can put something soft on the driver to obsorb more of these reflections instead of bouncing them around (Think of how much less a room with carpet echos than a room with hardwood floor). blutack/stickytack is not the heaviest substance, nor is it the softest, but it does a good job of performing both functions, the airborn sound deadening and the vibration dampening, fairly well. just rip off a hunk of stickytack and put it on the magnet, mush it down, and viola! Other methods involve dynamat (a mass vibration dampener), felt or accoustic foam (mostly to help absorb airborn resonance), or anything else that seems like a good Idea to stick on the back of the driver. I personally want to try Dynamat with foam ontop. In any case, i'm not sure if the difference between the products will be enough to produce a discernable change, but they all seem to provide an improvement over stock.

 

[Melvins]

thanks man, sounds complicated though

 

[Maverickmonk]

My bad, its really not (this is what I get for typing at 2 am), once you have the back of the driver off, all you have to do is stick a blob of stickytack (or a felt circle) on the back of the magnet, and you're done, theres not really any difficulty involved, because you don't need to know why it works (i only sort of know why it works), you can just give it a shot and see for yourself. I have felt circles on the back of my magnets, I went with them only because I'm vain and didn't like the blue showing through the grills.

 

[Melvins]

haha oh snap ok that sounds easier. Would it matter if I used felt or sticky tack?

 

[Maverickmonk]

So far as I could tell, not so much. It may make a subtle difference, but we are talking low single digits in percentages at most. Nothing that distinct that I can remember in the sound signature.

 

[LearnedHand]

I played around with the tape mod and the radio shack mod.  Not sure I heard anything discernably different with the shack mod, but I think the tape mod added a little oomph to the 225's.  I was too much of a wimp to actually start playing in the guts.