Introductions...

Looks like I am first in after the creator of this forum. I like what I am assuming are the driving principles behind it. I am known as fleasbaby over on head-fi, and I spend a lot of time making headphones. At the moment I work mainly on Grado-type builds. I turn my own wooden cups and use Grado, Magnum and Ypsilon drivers.

I have also in the past done T50rp builds, based mainly on the Thunderpants design, with a few tweaks of my own here and there.

I keep an Instagram account here:

instagram.com/fleasbaby

Its mostly pictures of my work, with the odd personal insertion here and there.

I really hope this spot takes off. It often feels a touch claustrophobic over on head-fi, rubbing shoulders with the folks who aren't into DIY, and who have some rather deep pocketbooks. Perhaps this will become a spot with some like-minds to chat to and share methods, designs and general headphone nerdery with.

Agreed, you're coming through loud and clear. Took a look at your Instagram and love your work. Welcome aboard and thanks for stopping by.

In order for us to not become oversaturated with headphone nerds (while there's nothing wrong in being one) I think we should look for some guys in the CNC/3D printing department. That's basically where I fall short, imo. I have a delta style 3D printer which I built from a kit, but I have been unable to get successful prints out of it for one reason or another. I'd like to eventually work towards printing with an SLA style printer (because of their high resolution), cast molding the printed object, and then making copies of the printed object out of http://www.smooth-on.com/ epoxies to make functional headphone parts. Wood sounds, looks and feels great, though. Hrm. Idk, I feel there's so many unused headphones up for sale on ebay, it's like a shame to make more, you know? Can we make a driver and then design adapters for that to driver to go into any headphone it can fit inside of?

...the man you seek is Arty Mcghee on Head-Fi.

He has a 3D printer and has been making cups and parts for Grado modding...

That aside, yes, I am all for cannibalizing. My favorite personal build is made of the Sony MDR7502 headband, custom cups and the Ypsilon driver.

For your driver, nothing wrong with using an existing housing. I have seen custom orthos built and sold on flea-Bay by Russian modders using the Beyerdynamic DT770 shell. Never heard them though. Might bite one day and get a pair if I have some cash to spare...

I can try and build you a pair of headphones if you're interested. And I sent him a PM.

khbaur330162 wrote:I can try and build you a pair of headphones if you're interested. And I sent him a PM.

Awesome. I just sent another PM connecting the dots a little more firmly for him.

I am down with the idea of making something. If you're ready to make drivers, I am ready to make cups/housings. I can also help with headband design/manufacture if I can (might be a great place to bring in Arty if he's interested...). Arty is also damn solid with a soldering iron and cables.

If you have a complete design already, I'd be interested in seeing it too, trying it out, maybe tweaking it as well...

Was just thinking this morning its time I maybe ventured toward ortho territory again.

Sadly, I'm not ready to make drivers. What you see in the ECR-Ortho thread is up to date. Funds and patience simply doesn't permit. It can get disheartening when you fail so many times at something, you just want to give up for a while.

I was more talking about build you a frankenphone if you wanted to dabble in orthodynamics. I've got a pair of YHD-2's to use as donors and a pair of Fostex T20 (unsure of the version, although they are definitely spiral circuit/circular magnet, not serpentine/square). I've got a pair of Sony MDR-CD280's that I've hand stitched leather ear pads for. I can throw one of the sets of drivers into that enclosure and ship it your way to mess around with damping if you want? I forget what I paid for the YHD's, but cost of the CD280's and T20 drivers are almost negligible, tbh.

khbaur330162 wrote:Sadly, I'm not ready to make drivers. What you see in the ECR-Ortho thread is up to date. Funds and patience simply doesn't permit. It can get disheartening when you fail so many times at something, you just want to give up for a while.

I was more talking about build you a frankenphone if you wanted to dabble in orthodynamics. I've got a pair of YHD-2's to use as donors and a pair of Fostex T20 (unsure of the version, although they are definitely spiral circuit/circular magnet, not serpentine/square). I've got a pair of Sony MDR-CD280's that I've hand stitched leather ear pads for. I can throw one of the sets of drivers into that enclosure and ship it your way to mess around with damping if you want? I forget what I paid for the YHD's, but cost of the CD280's and T20 drivers are almost negligible, tbh.

That's a bummer. Don't give up though! If I can help push forward the making of the driver somehow, let me know. Don't worry about the frankenphone. I might pick up a pair of those Sony's to mess with....keep yours for experimenting.

Arty can probably help here too!

hi guys

i'm here what's next?
i'm diggin the idea of 3d printed internals
and wood cups, the way to go for looks and tone
i've done some modding on the tr50p never really got
the sound i wanted, i know flea's has done some cups for
the tr50p i'm thinking something similar, i think ortho's have great potential
i have a hifiman HE400i which sounds amazing, i also have an old pair of
Koss esp-6's they're electrostatics i've never really used them they need to
run off speaker taps which i'm not set up for .....
i think the driver design is ambitious but i don't know anything about that stuff so
lets give it a shot, if you have a design send me the .stl file and i'll see how it prints

3d printing is not the easiest thing to do, and adhesion is the hardest
i also find the distance of the nozzle to the bed is critical, also that the bed is level
the printrbot has a probe that auto levels the bed as it goes, i would try pla on blue tape
with no heat and see if you can vary the distance until it works, if that doesn't work
you may haveood luck a hardware problem, i stay away from abs i've never got a decent print from it
with pla i can print on blue painters tape with no heat, or on kapton tape with heat
it depends on the filament and the model....

ok good luck

Sweet, thanks for joining us.

I've got a Denon AH-D2000 frame that's been sitting in a ziplock bag for a couple years now waiting for the chance to get an ECR-Ortho driver thrown into it. It has Stax Omega II leather ear pads on it, as well. The ECR-Ortho that I'm currently working on has a pentagonal movable portion, single sided spiral circuit, and fits into the D2k frame. Wood cups could be turned to fit those headphones, but I would need to alter the magnet assembly files so there's screw posts for the driver housings. I had planned to just let the drivers hang out in the open for the sake of getting a prototype up and running, I wasn't worried about aesthetics. I will run upstairs sometime today and upload the .stl file and host it in the CCA-1 thread, along with the pertinent information needed to populate the magnet holes. I have enough magnets to create two drivers, I'm almost positive. Magnets should be purchased in bulk (group buy) in order to keep the cost of production down, but as is you could purchase the magnets in order to make one headphone for ~$40-$60, I'd assume.

The driver design is ambitious, but imo mostly because it's spiral. This forces us to either make a double sided circuit so the leads are both at the perimeter of the diaphragm, use a lead-in voice coil wire which seems risky, or center pinch the diaphragm which in my mind defeats much of the purpose in designing a scalene pentagonal movable membrane in the first place. That begin said, Sony and I have already done most of the leg work. Sony spent time and money on the R&D to figure out how to smother diaphragm resonances which I copied and transferred over to the ECR-Ortho project. The work's already been done, in my mind, and it can still use off the shelf bar magnets. It can't get that much easier, imo.

If you can get a successful print of the stl file that I host would you mind shipping it my way? I can pay you for cost of materials and postage.

After that it's all about etching a usable circuit. Past that it's tensioning the etched circuit and gluing it to some spacers. After that it's putting the headphone together, hard wiring her up and seeing how well she sings, right?

Updated the CCA-1 thread. Here's a pic of the Denon D2k frame with Omega pads:

khbaur330162 wrote:Updated the CCA-1 thread. Here's a pic of the Denon D2k frame with Omega pads:

Sweet. Apologies for the silence. Took a weekend away with the wife and daughter. Am in San Diego with friends.

I was going to ask....is the driver designed for open or closed backs? either way I'd be happy to whip up something sexy and wooden for you to put on that frame.

Probably closed back, I have better luck with bass and overall tonal character in closed headphones, I feel.

Maybe we can drill out the holes a little in the magnet assemblies (and spacers), use nuts and long bolts to clamp those down, and then slide wood driver housings over the same bolts and use nuts and washers to bolt those down onto the baffle/housing assembly as well? Let me know if that's difficult to imagine, I don't feel I did the best job of describing what I'm envisioning. But if you don't mind making some wood driver housings for the ECR-Ortho I would not decline the offer. I think these have the potential to look really good. I don't like how the headband is Black and the pads are Brown, but maybe if you made the driver housings out of a wood with some Black and Brown (maybe a Wenge or something?) it could look good? I really don't know. I've always really liked the look of Purple Heart as well as any kind of wood that has a holographic grain to it like Bird's Eye Maple, or Tiger Maple. Whatever kind of wood you've got lying around will do, however, I'm sure. At this point I just want to focus on throwing a headphone together that works, we can fuss with the finesse of things later.

It's funny you both come from working on Grado's, that headband style is just about the easiest thing to work with/reproduce that I can imagine. My guess is when we start designing headbands for the project we'll want to look at Grados for inspiration.

khbaur330162 wrote:Probably closed back, I have better luck with bass and overall tonal character in closed headphones, I feel.

Maybe we can drill out the holes a little in the magnet assemblies (and spacers), use nuts and long bolts to clamp those down, and then slide wood driver housings over the same bolts and use nuts and washers to bolt those down onto the baffle/housing assembly as well? Let me know if that's difficult to imagine, I don't feel I did the best job of describing what I'm envisioning. But if you don't mind making some wood driver housings for the ECR-Ortho I would not decline the offer. I think these have the potential to look really good. I don't like how the headband is Black and the pads are Brown, but maybe if you made the driver housings out of a wood with some Black and Brown (maybe a Wenge or something?) it could look good? I really don't know. I've always really liked the look of Purple Heart as well as any kind of wood that has a holographic grain to it like Bird's Eye Maple, or Tiger Maple. Whatever kind of wood you've got lying around will do, however, I'm sure. At this point I just want to focus on throwing a headphone together that works, we can fuss with the finesse of things later.

It's funny you both come from working on Grado's, that headband style is just about the easiest thing to work with/reproduce that I can imagine. My guess is when we start designing headbands for the project we'll want to look at Grados for inspiration.

I get what you're saying with the nuts and bolts....kind of like the LCD XC. I can do that....I just countersink the holes on the edges of the cup and make sure to leave enough wood around them and below the nuts keep a sturdy structure. Easy to do. I actually did something similar for someone who asked for wooden caps he wanted to use to make his LCD-X into closed cans.

When you're ready to go, let me know. I'll PM my address, you can send me the cans, and I'll make the cups. I'll do them in Black Walnut which finishes a good, dark shade of brown and doesn't break the bank. They'll match the pads nicely.