spritzer

Yeah about the bias supply... could you send me the BOM, Marc?

I did the research just for you. Rinkya charges a 15$ base fee and then 1$ on every 1000Yen with a 20$ minimum on those combined. At the current exchange rate that is a 9.3% fee (was closer to 10% when the Yen was weaker). KuboTen has a 10$ base fee and then 7% off the purchase price. You have to pay with non CC-based funds though or this jumps to 10%. With the specials running, Rinkya can be cheaper but the insane shipping charges (always twice what it actually costs to ship) and the fact that they threw out some of my Stax boxes means I won't use them any more. They were fine to begin with, crammed multiple items into huge boxes but then they started to doublebox everything and with perhaps 3 Stax amps in each shipment, it got very expensive, very fast. I then sent them an email and asked them to stop this since the packages got here in less then a week with zero damage time after time. Next package shows up and they had thrown out all of the Stax boxes which I know were included in the auctions. They even left the Styrofoam supports around a 717 just to add insult to injury.

42?

There are some headphones suffer from bad design flaws (Micro-Seiki MS-2 springs to mind) that need to be serviced to function but on most it's just normal wear and tear on the elastics and padding. Stax for instance categorizes their spare parts as either user replaceable (earpads, arc assemblies) or items that should only be fitted by the factory/distributors.

You really do suck at taking pics. Hidden in that blurry mess is a version of the BH similar to the BHSE, uber bias supply, the new electrostatic amp Marc has designed and even my old Sony ECR-400's fitted with SFI drivers. It's times like this when I wish there was a direct flight from Iceland to Texas...

That's strange since Sigma's are some of the most comfortable headphones ever made, despite their size and weight. Stax has always called their units earspeakers, long before they came up with crazy designs such as the Sigma and Omega. It has nothing to do with the looks but rather how they can just disappear on the head and with the SR-007, provide depth which even the Sigma struggles with.

The earpad mod should clear up most of the midrange issues but I only did them after plugging the ports so the results may vary.

I entered into a bidding war a few times within the Rinkya system and they have a page which says that what Rinkya bidder is currently in the lead, with numerous user names to allow that. Btw. welcome Craig.

That's just like a normal day at work!

Now that's a brilliant idea.

There will be. One of my closest friends will be getting married in late August so we'll make something epic for him.

Well yeah but that's not the same. It's no fun ridiculing them in a PM.

Nice to see that the quality of the thread hasn't dropped while I was offline... As for the Mk1 vs. Mk2 debate, I'm well aware what driving them properly does to the sound and no amount of voltage/current can fix those issues. I had the old BH here when I did my comparisons (and the mods for that matter) so that certainly wasn't an issue. I can think of a very simple way to solve this matter, does anybody know of a cheap Mk2 for sale? I'll buy it, mod it and then send it out to CJ for testing. Those aluminum sheets are just decorative (and used to hold the dustcovers in place) and it's just a different color used while anodizing. The stators are identical and they are built in the same way.

Why do I always miss out on these idiots...

Went to work and was wished happy birthday all day long. Not mine though but rather the anniversary of when our company was founded, 175 years ago. It's technically not until in early September but one has to milk it for all it's worth...

Looks like that email I just sent isn't needed. Congrats and we expect a burn-in graph with percentages once you get them.

That midrange coloration (bass hump too) also does my head in and all their redeeming factors just disappear. I can tolerate many flaws in my headphones but only those where the headphone leaves something out and doesn't make up for it my adding some nonsense to the music, hence my preference of the HE60 over the HE90, SR-Lambda over the L-Pro's, SR-3 over the SR-3 New and it goes on and on. A small change in how the diaphragm was tensioned is more then enough to account for these differences in sound. Other factors such as the glue used also apply but the tension is a large part of the sound. The Wide PC-OCC cable is always the same, despite the color. The new LE cable is the first advancement in that area in 16 years.

The LNS has the same driver and cable as the 404 though the diaphragm is a bit different. The SR-Omega cable is dark brown and not like the SR-007 color.

To my ears, side by side, the SC1 and 404 are very different headphones. The 404 is peaky and edgy while the SR-404 is more like the SR-Lambda and the Lambda Spirit/Pro Classic, very smooth though ultimately not impressive in the long run. They are both Lambdas so they fall within those parameters but the difference is clearly there even thought the phones are nearly identical. The LNS are also identical but sound nothing like either of those. The devil is in the details my friend...

I still haven't got a scanner so I have some excuse...

They don't have 3 pin outlets over there so most gear is just double insulated.

The SR-SC1 and the SR-404 are quite far apart in terms of SQ. The Mk2/A is very similar to the SR-404 to my ears, especially in the midrange.

Wasn't it bad enough that I started a birthday thread for KG but now you are going to fill his inbox with spam?

The dustcover on the side facing the ear should be a sheet of mylar or PVC that is secured by a ring around the driver. There is a woven nylon dustcover on the back. Being Koss there is no way to be sure that they haven't changed something though... If the dust cover is tight as a drum then it changes the impedance of the air next to the main membrane and thus the damping of the driver. That dustcover is almost like an afterthought and it wouldn't surprise me since none of the older Koss models had external dustcovers.