[mclaren20]

Ok, I just got a pair of Grado SR80's and Im going to use them as my new portable cans. But as some of you know, the cable is pretty big, thick, and a little long. Well, I want to change the cable.

I want it to be the length of a normal portable phone wir(however long that is. Would I be better off using a cable from another 'phone that I have? Or would i be better of making my own or getting wire from somewhere? If I used a cable from another phone, would that pose any problems; or would a swap be that easy?

 

[MooseyDoom]

Swap should be relatively easy. The Grados are pretty easy to take apart and desolder. As for wire, there's Canare mini star quad which is ~5mm in diameter (from markertek.com). McMaster.com has a no-name 4-conductor "audio cable" which is just over 3mm in diameter. The main disadvantage of using an stealing another cable would be that it might be hard to solder, depending on the cable, of course. The thin cords that I've seen (from broken portable headphones) have thin enamel-coated wires wrapped around some sort of string or thread. Separating these very thin wires and scraping off the enamel may be difficult. Although if I remember correctly you may be able to burn off the enamel with a soldering iron, or dissolve it in some sort of solvent? (I've never tried these methods)

 

[Demolition]

Mogami Neglex 2799 is also a possibility. It's 3.2 mm in diameter. Sells for about $0.39 per foot at Redco.


Quote:

Originally Posted by MooseyDoom Although if I remember correctly you may be able to burn off the enamel with a soldering iron, or dissolve it in some sort of solvent?

A solder pot would be the easiest way to do that. Just dip the wire into the pot and it's automatically stripped and tinned.

General purpose solder pots can be found for as little as $60-70 (usually made by Hexacon or Esico). The Plato solder pots (that I linked above) sell for ~$950 and ~$1900, respectively, by the way. (In other words: Yikes!

)

D.

 

[taylor]

I would suggest that you solder in a 2.5mm or 3.5mm mono jack into each earcup, so that you can ahve a variety of cables. Like a 4ft thin one for portable, a 8ft one for home, and maybe a 20ft one for when you're far away from the amp.

Canare Starquad and Mini Starquad is reputed to be very good.

 

[Budgie]

You should take a look at this-

http://headwize.com/projects/showpro...=grado_prj.htm

 

[mclaren20]

Damnit, i got all of the needed supplies, but the headwize page isnt working. When I open up the grados, which is the ground and which is the signal, on the actual driver that is?

 

[MooseyDoom]

Yeah, HeadWize is changing servers. Although the projects were up yesterday when I looked at them. The grado mod page is up now. =) If you look at the open driver with the soldered wire at 12 o'clock, I believe that Grado soldered the ground wire to the right side and the signal wire to the left side on both drivers. If you mean by color, the ground is a blue wire and the signal wire is red or white for left and right. (At least it was for the pair of 225s I'm looking at.)

On a side note... I don't know why but Grado wired up this plug so that the red wire carries the left signal and the white wire carries the right signal. Not that it matters, but I found that kinda weird.