[cmarti]

All these headphones like to be feed through a vintage receiver.

 

[nick n]

Feilong4 what were the SE-7 pads like were they still pleather coated , or down to fabric even partially?

 

[Feilong4]

All these headphones like to be feed through a vintage receiver.

Hmm, I have an old JVC R-X40 receiver that has pretty bad imbalance issues. The only headphone I've plugged them into and liked were the AD2000 which warmed things up. It's not the greatest receiver though, but I'm not willing to invest a significant amount for a vintage receiver for the Monitor 10 at the moment.

Feilong4 what were the SE-7 pads like were they still pleather coated , or down to fabric even partially?

Hmm, I don't remember to be honest. They might have been down to the fabric.

 

[Feilong4]

Not sure if this would be considered blasphemy to some, but I've transplanted Yamaha YH-1 drivers into my Monitor 10. I like the aesthetic of the Monitor 10, but I like the sound of the YH-1 so I thought, "Hey, why not combine both?" Surprisingly good results with some damping. Relatively neutral with a hint of warmth and brightness. Maybe a dip in the upper mids. I just had to blu-tack the front of the magnet onto the baffle plate a bit.





This is a long shot, but does anyone have the foam under the earpad? Mine came with one missing, so I made a DIY foam as a temporary thing.

 

[ruthieandjohn]

I am selling my vintage Pioneer SE-L40 headphones, if you are interested, here. https://www.head-fi.org/threads/vintage-pioneer-se-l40-headphones-brass-brown-leather.866439/

 

[DJ The Rocket]

its power hungry- all those old 8 ohm headphones are.

I think a lot of them are actually 16 ohm drivers wired in parallel with a 16 ohm resistor, I know my SE L40 is, and I can't imagine they would do the others any differently. It makes sense, for the amplifiers people had back when these were made.

The parallel circuit means that the amp "sees" the 8 ohms they're listed at. But remember that half the power is being wasted in the resistor in this configuration, so your amp is forced to push out twice as much power as the drivers would need without the parallel resistor. With 1970s era speaker amps this made sense.

It's worth mentioning the fact that 8 ohms is outside of the range most modern headphone amps are designed for, and using one to drive an 8 ohm headphone can burn out your amp. Trying it probably wouldn't actually damage most of them in practice, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Everyone knows hooking up 4 ohm loudspeakers to a power amp stable at 8 ohms lets all the magic smoke out.

I know removing it isn't "stock" any more and that matters to some people, but I don't have a vintage tuner to power them, and with the gear I use they sound so much better without the resistor

 

[Davidzak64]

Hitting the reset button on this thread.

 

[Cifems]

Family photo of the (almost) complete lineup of "Variable Chamber" headphones
Left to right:
SE-2, SE-4, SE-7, SE-11, SE-9, SE-15, Master-1S
All obtained on a budget, in various states of disrepair (missing pads, cracked headbands, etc.), hence all the non-standard replacement parts.

 

[ourfpshero]

Wow, awesome collection

 

[GREQ]

Family photo of the (almost) complete lineup of "Variable Chamber" headphones
Left to right:
SE-2, SE-4, SE-7, SE-11, SE-9, SE-15, Master-1S
All obtained on a budget, in various states of disrepair (missing pads, cracked headbands, etc.), hence all the non-standard replacement parts.

I noticed you rewired both SE-11 and SE-15.
Do you open them up using the same method?

 

[Bingturong]

Family photo of the (almost) complete lineup of "Variable Chamber" headphones
Left to right:
SE-2, SE-4, SE-7, SE-11, SE-9, SE-15, Master-1S
All obtained on a budget, in various states of disrepair (missing pads, cracked headbands, etc.), hence all the non-standard replacement parts.

Lovely collection~ I love the red on the SE-15. I wonder how the 15 sounds in comparison to the Master

 

[Cifems]

I noticed you rewired both SE-11 and SE-15.
Do you open them up using the same method?

They open up in pretty similar fashions, peel off the glued-on pads and then pry off the first body piece directly under the pads. There's a lot of plastic "welding" where they just secured parts by melted protruding bits into the surrounding frame, so it's unfortunately a bit destructive to pry them apart. .

The SE-11 has MMCX connections because there's more space inside, but the SE-9/15 body is very slim not much space to work.. I didn't really rewire them, lol, there's just a sleeve of paracord over the original wires to smooth out the jank from old age.

To my ear, the entire family (except 2&4) sounds pretty similar, with a wonderfully deep sub-bass extension, decently neutral mids, and a rolled off top end. They're all on-ear but the Master-1's particularly smaller cup size is actually a bit uncomfortable for me and shrinks the soundstage a bit.

Also I am most definitely not hearing the Master-1s at their full potential... the pair i obtained were basically in complete utter shambles. It was a painful process to restore them to working condition but it's almost certainly substandard.

 

[Bingturong]

Yeah, I always considered my Eleven to be like a vintage HD600, it was good but I didn't particularly like the sound~

 

[GREQ]

I prefer both SE-11 and 15 after putting over-pads on them by sticking on (with double-sided tape) modified baffles from donor headphones.
But SE-11 still wasn't perfect after the mod either... only slightly better.

 

[Cifems]

Pioneer SE-M1 (1977)
It's impossible to find specs for them, search results are confounded by the SE-Master1, and it also seems super rare. The only mentions I could find are on Pioneer's own website history and one Russian forum.
From what I understand, Radio communications headsets sometimes intentionally cut off high & low frequencies reduce RFI noise, so these actually sound pretty terrible for music. But you can't beat the vintage Pioneer aesthetic. Gorgeous design.
I've also included pictures from the auction listing for record purposes (because they took better photos than I did, lol)