[Seaningtime]

My parents gave me a dodge neon to commute back and forth to school with last year, and over the summer I put in a pretty nice sound system ($3000ish). And being a thirteen year young neon, 3 months after I put everything into it it breaks down and goes to car heaven

.


My parents have allowed me to drive a van to school now which I can't put my system into, so I'm pretty much stuck without good sounding music in my day.

Naturally, I need to get music back in my life. I have sony mdr-v500s right now that I listen to all the time, and they aren't cutting it- I never even thought you could have good sounding headphones (Hoping to be proven wrong very soon).

So after cruising these forums I decided to buy the alessandro ms-1 (Just ordered them).

I will be running these off of a 5th gen DIYipod I just finished

(I was going to run it to my car system, but now I'll never know how it would sound) (Also don't have a headphone amplifier...)

Sorry for sidetracking so much, but I thought I'd share my unfortunate tale.

My question for you is- would it be logical to take the drivers out of the alessandro and put them into the sony v500s, then cut away the back of the sonys to make it vented like the ms-1? (Placing a mesh grill in place of the hole, or something of that sort)

And if I were to do this would the sound still be great quality (Equal to the alessandros, rather)?

I have done enough that I feel pretty confident in my abilities to do this swap, but obviously I won't if it would sound bad.

And I hate to be vain here, but personally I love the look of the sonys, the alessandros... not so much. Lastly, I have heard plenty of negativity regarding the comfort of the ms1 which is potentially another reason to change

Any help would be appreciated

 

[Nagasaki_Kid]

Grado drivers are very intergated to thier frames. Extracting the drivers is very difficult and would result in the definite destruction of the grado frame and you would have a narrow chance of not damaging the drivers if you had not previous experince not to mention changing the back chamber would totally affect the sound.

Edit: Since you would destroy the grado frame if you attempt to extract the driver there would be no going back if you don't like the sound.

 

[Punnisher]

I have extracted the drivers out of my sr60. I used a pair of precision wire cutters and basically cut the frame into several pieces and proceeded to pry each piece off.

There's not too much risk as far as the drivers are concerned but you will be butchering the grado cups completely.

 

[Seaningtime]

Thanks Nagasaki kid- I suppose I won't be attempting this if the tonality will be completely different.

And Punnisher- Did you transplant those drivers to another pair of headphones

 

[yukihiro]

Why not just modify the ms1's? You don't like the look of any of the modded Grado's at all? There are a lot of mods out there for Grado's.

 

[XXII]

have you seen Larry's work at headphile?

Headphile, headphone tweaks and modding, woodies, interconnects, Grado, Sennheiser, AKG, Beyer, woody and more...

 

[lauinbeta]

I dont think it would be in his budget to get them professionally modded. I've taken out drivers of several cheap headphones to to satisfy my own curiosity and for some magnets (these weren't worth reusing elsewere). I didn't took much to save any bit intact but the drivers. Follow as Punnisher says and good luck on your mod.

 

[buddhashenglong]

Try opening up the v500 cups, putting on the mesh grill, and leaving the stock driver. Replace the foam in the magnet (port?) with something looser or more dense.

 

[b0dhi]

You can definitely remove the Grado drivers (without destroying anything), but if you transplanted them in the V500 enclosure you'd get a significantly different sound than the original, and it might be worse or better depending on your taste. That's taking into account the fact that you'll be boring a hole in the rear of the V500.

 

[Seaningtime]

thanks for the replies guys

Buddha, what exactly do you mean by putting on a mesh grill and replacing the foam in the magnet?

I assume you mean take out the cotton pads in front of the driver and replace that with mesh?

The cotton driver I have no clue what you mean

I would like to get the most out of these headphones though, because I did pay quite a bit for them

 

[Nagasaki_Kid]

I believe buddhashenglong is mentioning a procedure similar to this v600 mod http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/int...00-56k-247925/

 

[Seaningtime]

wicked, I'm gonna tear mine apart and have a look


-Took it apart removed those little foamy things, took out the paper and cloth filter and replaced it with mesh, also added some tissue paper behind the driver.

There is definitely a very noticeable change from before and after I did these little mods... Why would Sony sabotage themselves like that??

Anyways... anymore cool mods to increase SQ

 

[buddhashenglong]

Yes, exactly like that. "Hmmm" I am still laughing about it, for some reason i find it hilarious. I'm glad mine were free.

 

[b0dhi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaningtime /img/forum/go_quote.gif wicked, I'm gonna tear mine apart and have a look -Took it apart removed those little foamy things, took out the paper and cloth filter and replaced it with mesh, also added some tissue paper behind the driver. There is definitely a very noticeable change from before and after I did these little mods... Why would Sony sabotage themselves like that?? Anyways... anymore cool mods to increase SQ

It has nothing to do with sabotage. Those were put there for good reasons. One of the reasons is to protect the driver from debris. You haven't increased the sound quality, you've altered the response of the headphones to better match your taste.