You know when you get new black socks and specks appear on the carpet where you remove your shoes (or slippers – if you like a bit of comfort) well, my wife ever vigilant in keeping up my appearance (what do you mean not that vigilant!) constantly was picking out black specs from my hair and beard after my time in the studio.
Being a man of certain years my hair is a little bit salt and peppered😝 so the said specks show up, also, certain that –unless life has unleashed yet another twist of fate where the dandruff of my youth has returned in a deep black form – we had to get to the bottom of this!
Yes you guessed it, disintegrating headphone cups!
We found the culprit to be my tracking headphones. The covers were starting to disintegrate. As also was the headband.
These headphones are great for tracking. This is when you want to keep the audio from you headphones from leaking into the microphones – which in a studio are super sensitive. They can pick up a mouse with belly ache in the hallway. 😳
I could put up with it but as I give zoom lessons from my studio I don’t want “black snow” to detract from my delivery. I have studio lighting and HD webcams so I can’t even disguise the fact with fuzzy imaging. 🙄
The headphones work really well and Ive worn them in nicely so no way was I going to bin them. They were really tight to begin with. Not all headphones are repairable so I checked to see if there were any spares available and yea! So I ordered some new covers and fortunately the process is relatively simple with just one very important thing to watch out for – hence this blog.
The ear cups are changed by first prising off the old cups, looking at the new cups I worked out the best way to do it noting where the plastic barbs were arranged.
The ear cups were replaced really easily.
The headband is glued on, take care when removing as the middle section may be stuck to the inner connecting cable as mine was. Mine had a healthy coil of cable which I narrowly avoided ripping out but it was firmly stuck to the headband. You can see it in the centre of the picture below.
So pleased to have my headphones back to near mint condition. I have kept the old cups as I have a cunning plan to replace the covering with black heavy denier nylon! This could be interesting, however these should keep me going for another five years at least!
#DIY #HomeStudio #Headphones #
FretsnReeds 