HD-250 tweaks
Dec 16, 2009 20:56:34 GMT
Post by PinkFloyd on Dec 16, 2009 20:56:34 GMT
Seeing as I now have two pairs of these I thought I'd have a look inside one pair and see what's going on. It's pretty easy to flip the back off (you just pull it off!) to gain access to all the internal gubbins.....
First thing that struck me as a bit flimsy was the porting / venting system..... two little tubes that sit inside the driver itself (between the magnet) this sits "loose" and is only held in position by the plastic on the driver cage....
This is it:
And it sits in here:
Here it is in position:
OK, first things first, I decided to glue this into position as I see no reason at all why it should not be securely attached to the headshell..... Once it was glued into position (superglue, does a great job here) I moulded a thin coat of butyl rubber sealant over it so once the driver cage makes contact with it it will provide a good seal:
You can get an idea of where this vent fits into here:
Right, it was about now that I lost interest but I will be going back in tomorrow to tidy things up a bit.... I made up a ring of butyl:
And then fitted it into position:
The idea being that this would provide a better seal / damping than the stock felt ring.... it probably will but I'll do a better job of measuring things tomorrow when I go back under.
You will also see strips of tape on there... this is the famous 3M damping tape......
Anyways, very early days, there are a lot of things I want to try with these 'phones but already the "fixed" porting system has bought about a noticeable improvement in the bass department.... there's not "more" of it but what is there behaves a lot better.... the bass notes are tighter, more musical and easier to follow.....
I don't know what part, if any, the damping tape has played.... as I say, early days, but am certain there's a lot more performance that can be tweaked out of these 'phones.... the stock "fitments" have way too much free play around them and small things like a bit of glue here and a few butyl rubber seals here will make all the difference IMO..... of course, they couldn't do this at the factory, it would be way too time consuming / not cost effective but, given some time and experimentation, I'm sure we can squeeze even more performance out of these wonderful 'phones.....
I'll report back when I have tried a few more things
First thing that struck me as a bit flimsy was the porting / venting system..... two little tubes that sit inside the driver itself (between the magnet) this sits "loose" and is only held in position by the plastic on the driver cage....
This is it:
And it sits in here:
Here it is in position:
OK, first things first, I decided to glue this into position as I see no reason at all why it should not be securely attached to the headshell..... Once it was glued into position (superglue, does a great job here) I moulded a thin coat of butyl rubber sealant over it so once the driver cage makes contact with it it will provide a good seal:
You can get an idea of where this vent fits into here:
Right, it was about now that I lost interest but I will be going back in tomorrow to tidy things up a bit.... I made up a ring of butyl:
And then fitted it into position:
The idea being that this would provide a better seal / damping than the stock felt ring.... it probably will but I'll do a better job of measuring things tomorrow when I go back under.
You will also see strips of tape on there... this is the famous 3M damping tape......
Anyways, very early days, there are a lot of things I want to try with these 'phones but already the "fixed" porting system has bought about a noticeable improvement in the bass department.... there's not "more" of it but what is there behaves a lot better.... the bass notes are tighter, more musical and easier to follow.....
I don't know what part, if any, the damping tape has played.... as I say, early days, but am certain there's a lot more performance that can be tweaked out of these 'phones.... the stock "fitments" have way too much free play around them and small things like a bit of glue here and a few butyl rubber seals here will make all the difference IMO..... of course, they couldn't do this at the factory, it would be way too time consuming / not cost effective but, given some time and experimentation, I'm sure we can squeeze even more performance out of these wonderful 'phones.....
I'll report back when I have tried a few more things