mypasswordis

There is one other way... the most excruciating and possibly most satisfying: buying and modding your own isodynamics. Even after countless hours of thinking about modding and then modding, I'd say it was worth it.

The current generation Fostexen are known as the T50RP, the T40RPMkII, and the T20RPMkII. wualta also posted a link about the Japanese adding an 'n' to the end of the models, possibly to denote the new pads.

Woah, it sounds like you've bought a different headphone, the T40RPMkII. Let us know how it sounds, I don't think anyone on HF or HC has heard it before.

Completely unrelated: My Koss ESP10 came today. I can't test them until I modify the pin outs but they look to be in good condition, except for the fact that they smell a bit like they've been dipped in horse manure and the pads are complete crap and unusable. It even came with the original headphone box, manual, some random manual for an electret mic, and a random crappy 1/4" coiled extension cable!

Hey, so you did end up ordering them! Yeah, I'm trying to get them to sound like the Lambda(s) in terms of frequency response, so I'm going to damp them harder for more treble, trading off some bass. There's quite a bit of bass to go around anyway, as you know. Btw, I just had a whole lining of craft felt over the weatherstrip chassis dampening.

I just put a layer of superfelt over the backs of the drivers. Still needs more damping. Maybe I will buy a cut of that cashmere felt.

All I ended up doing on mine as of right now is line the backs with weatherstrip and have a layer of craft felt over that, with a reflex dot on the back of the driver. The bass is HUGE currently (with a good seal) and the treble is slightly attenuated so all I need to do is damp. I had two weatherstrips on the backs of the T50RPv2 before that and it killed the bass. I would rank the Fostexen I own to currently be: T40v1 > T50RPv2 > T20v2 The YH-1/HP-1 would be between the T50RP and the T20. The T50RP has more potential. Electrostats can't really beat the orthos for sheer impact, which the T50RPv2 has in spades.

If I had the money I'd snap up the Sigma 404s right now. Damn.

I'm sure if he bothered trying, he'd be able to. And you don't have to just play French music on a French violin. I need to learn Tzigane one of these days, but I feel like I should learn Zigeunerweisen first. Do you play or are you just an avid classical music fan?

That's terrible, especially on priceless instruments like Strads. The owner mentioned that story after I noticed a wolf tone on the G string of a Vuilliaume I was just trying for fun. He said he never bothered to try to fix the issue because it sounded so good.

Funnily enough, the owner of the violin shop I most frequent said he actually got rid of a wolf tone by placing a bit of putty underneath a wing (underneath the f hole) of the top plate of a violin because it was flapping around a bit too much. In powerful violins, there can actually be too much resonance.

The driver being.. my SFI driver. Not.. the T50RP driver. Yeah. Sleep is good for me.

I should install a roll bar on my T50RPv2 and take it for a ride. It's gonna handle so much better. Or stuff it with blue-tak (still don't know the proper way to spell it) until it looks like the internal organs of a Smurf. Or be really cheap and just use the roll of weatherstrip that's coming to both damp and make a bass lens. Probably what's going to end up happening. Edit: And hold the driver in place. I'm so good at being cheap.

There are so many wrong images flying through my head right now... Smegma Pro is the best name of any headphone ever.

Gah, I'm stuck with this supraaural frame. At least it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and it sounds pretty good, to boot. I'm close to getting the sound just the way I want it. I'm glad you like your Orthodome #4! Gives me hope that I can yet make a good circumaural SFI with the right donor headphone. I still have a matched quad of drivers left, I was hoping to think up some crazy headphone implementation for them, but nothing yet.

Hm, all I know is it is the least efficient of all of my non-electrostats (not really a comparison there), including the Fostex T40, which is slightly less efficient than my K340. What do you think of the 120-ohm's sound compared to the 32-ohmer? Are you still using a Goldring frame?

Really? Yours aren't? Maybe I'm doing something wrong... What do you have your Orthodome hooked up to? Aw, don't be like that. =(

Yay for another T50RPv2 owner! It should sound very good after modding. I might be overly sensitive to nasty enclosure resonances after owning the K340, but this thing seriously needs damping. wualta, how did you remove your stock damping films? Mine are glued on very tight, I ended up just cutting the center holes out and might end up just cutting out the other holes if I can't figure out how to remove them. Stuffy and congested because of the crappy resonances. They're probably the easiest to drive out of all my orthos. You want inefficient? Try a 120-ohm SFI driver.

X2

Impressions: Needs moar driver coupling to the frame. The previous dynamic driver was secured into place using three washers screwed down next to the driver, but the SFI drivers are too small for that. I'm going to go for bigger washers since that's the easiest way. It'd be better if they were rubberized but I don't know if I can find any.

Yeah, I'm going to glue those suckers down and screw them in later. Doesn't affect function and I figured out how to open the housing so.. impressions coming tomorrow. Oh, nice, comfort is never to be overlooked when it comes to headphones.

I opened up the plastic clamp to the rod adjustment and found there were two bullet casing-shaped pieces of metal in there to hold the rod in place while allowing it to slide. Horrible idea. It is nearly impossible to put them back in correctly without glue or something else to hold them in place. I just left them loose in the plastic casing when putting it back on after getting really frustrated. Why couldn't they just have screws to open up the cups so I could swap out the drivers in a few minutes?

Thanks. I just got my fosterphones in the mail. I was going to laugh at how crappy dynamics sound but they don't work... the sound is intermittent to the point of making a blip ever few seconds I wiggle the wires. Also, the pads were glued on extremely tight, I hope I can remove them without ripping them. And then find some way of sticking them back on. Edit: Whoops, they're supposed to stay on. They're connected to a plastic piece that comes off with a twist. No screws or anything after that, which sucks. Time to pry them open.

I want to order stuff to further mod my Fostexen. Where do I find bitumen and thick weatherstrip? I see something online that is 7/16" which might actually be enough. Also, I might just buy some Dynamat to use since it's shiny and a certain other person uses it when modding headphones. Gets pretty expensive, though.

The safest way to transplant them is just by cutting the whole plastic plate off and trimming to size, like smeggy did, since the neodymium magnets are not fun to deal with, let loose. I don't think a Goldring will do in this case. I'm going to try to transfer a pair of SFI drivers into an old Audio-Technica fosterphone with the same frame as the old electrets they used to make. So in other words, small cup volume, supraaural, which is exactly what I wanted to avoid, but it's the easiest way to get these drivers to actually sound decent. T50RP Donut sounds very cool, though.