DIY electrostatic headphones

[spritzer]

Finally the PCB's arrived for the Kiwi Ears headphone drivers:

Just three different PCB's needed, on the left is the diaphragm ring which is a 0.6mm pcb but with no solder mask so it is actually 0.51mm.  This has to be ENIG to make it completely flat but most fabs require that anyway.  Film is 2um mylar-c as that is so simple to get and relatively easy to work with.  

In the middle is the dust cover holder/spacer.  I made this 1.6mm thick as that way it clears the stock lip on the baffle that was around the dynamic driver.  I used the first one as spacer and then stacked up the driver sandwich.  For the dust covers I used the same mylar as the diaphragms but not stretched as much

Finally the stators, 1mm ENIG pcb's and this is the outer side with the inner side having a smaller active area, aka like the SR-007.  Holes are a bit less than 1mm but that can easily be altered for another run.  

Here they are assembled with the only alterations to the baffle where I counter sunk the mounting screws.  There were just the three holes there in a row and with the earpad mounting plate being flush to this, it had to be done.  One second with a counter sunk bit will do this as this is nasty, cheap ABS plastic.  

Here they are assembled.  Only mods to the chassis is that I enlarged the two holes there are on each side (cable entry and a port on top) to 5mm so the strain relief would fit and the solid plastic plug I glued into where the port is.  The cable is the 6 core silicone wire that can be found everywhere now with a 3D printed Y-split and Stax plug made from an XLR plug and pins.  

Now for the sound... lets just call it work in progress.    This is very much the first draft and one channel is slightly weaker than the other (I swapped out the diaphragm for another which fixed it mostly) so I need to look into that.  I'll probably just build a second pair of drivers so I can match them into pairs as I have another set of the headphones.  Massive baffle leak too and the housing... has issues... so bass is not their strong suit for now.  That needs to be fixed but I might have to get creative with that.  

Still for a cheap project that took only a few hours to make and cost less than 150$ all in... there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.  

Edited 1 hour ago by spritzer