Warren Audio's broken hd800 cables
Dec 18, 2009 at 4:14 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 62

lovefancy

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With more than 60 email messages keep asking the progress of the cable, what shouldve come in no more than 10 days as the seller promised, the long waited intercept cable finally arrived after TWO months. After an hour of listening, I found that one of the hd800 connector was not tightly screwed and if I touched it, it stopped making sounds. There is a really long story behind it with endless email messages and I am sorry that I am not gonna write them all here, all I can say is that this seller keep lying about shipping time, I paid for express shipping with tracking and he shipped with an inferior service without a tracking number, lied about sending me a free interconnect, what a crappy purchasing experience.



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my furutech 601 xlr plug, melted inside
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I had a headfier fix it because I heard Rick is no good at putting on hd800 connectors. Here is how it looks fixed, i hope this will put an end, the fixed cable is on its way to my home now
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Dec 19, 2009 at 4:43 AM Post #8 of 62
Even with bad soldering this problem is preventable. If you don't bring the glueshrink up high enough so that it's past the rear nut, then when you twist the earcup wires, you are actually torquing the contact assembly rather than the plug body itself, as the contact assembly is inserted into the earcup socket's pin holes. Basically as you turn the earcup wire, the bottom nut and earcup wire can together unscrew from the plug shell as you can see in the top picture, which is held captive in the plug socket. As the earcup wires are connected to the contact assembly, if you don't have the wires glueshrinked to the entire shell then when you twist that wire you are twisting at the solder joints. However, this is not the only HD800 cable I've seen that does not have a very durable plug finish.
 
Dec 19, 2009 at 9:51 AM Post #9 of 62
Ouch! Sure looks like a terrible soldering job.
Nice to hear that got a fellow Head-Fier to fix it though.
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Apr 26, 2011 at 3:30 PM Post #10 of 62
I come from Ireland and I recently bought a new balanced amplifier and some HD800's, but I wanted an XLR 4 pin cable so I found this guys site in Canada and emailed them.
 
Sure no problem he said. paid $90 for express delivery and he said the cables would go out in a few days once they were made and 'checked by an engineer'.
 
I got tracking and realised it wasn't an international delivery, but to america. He then sent me different tracking, and 3 days later it didn't work. I called canada post who told me it wasn't a valid tracking number.
 
He said his wife was ill and the cables must have gotten mixed up. This went on for ages and the guy even said he mixed me up with another Allan and thought I had them already.
 
Weeks later after much hassle he eventually sent me tracking. they arrived a few days ago and looked great out of the box. No sound from the left cable, although if I hold the cable a certain way it 'pops' back in.
 
Luckily I have a friend close by who is into this and runs a store, and he is going to fix them for me. I only found this thread via google, but this guy is seriously messed up and I see he is banned here as well.
 
Let me just stress I am not here to cause hassles for anyone, but im glad this thread exists for people on google, I just hope people check Warren Audio out before ordering, because his store looks semi professional, although im always wary of people who only accept orders via paypal and who use ':D' text in emails.
 
live and learn I guess, Very costly mistake on my behalf.
 
Thanks for letting me vent, I just hope other people aren't getting ripped off.
 
Apr 27, 2011 at 9:54 AM Post #13 of 62
on a more positive note, I have had good success buying tubes from the states, picked up some nice Tung Sol 5998's, 7238's and others.Sometimes it works out ok, but in this case sadly I think Rick really is struggling to finish the cables.They look great too, with his company name on the cabling, and the materials seem equally good. I didnt want to leave the cable in the system but when both headphones were working it really did improve the bass response of the HD800's. Very good quality, until the soldering process takes place. I have to wait on the damage report to get these fixed, but im guessing both ends will need replaced and then silver soldered. Spent almost $400 on them too, thats the annoying part.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Apr 29, 2011 at 11:43 AM Post #14 of 62
The LH headphone socket has a broken pin and soldering isn't good either. It looks like the headphones I bought will need new plugs. The reason it broke is that the cable Warren Audio sell can rotate/twist against the plug as the heatshrink does not hold it firm. heatshrink as you guys know comes in two varieties, with or without heat sensitive glue and he has used one without it. New plugs and a retermination are in order. Good value for $400. nice job. not.

 
 
 
 
 

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