There is a fairly rare set of Kenwood orthodynamic headphones on Craigslist that I would love to buy, but the seller wont ship.

It is on my way home from work.

Great, now I get to look dumb for trying to help someone out.

what is a uc connection?

Edited June 13, 200917 yr by raif
bad grammar makes it worse

Ha!

No, I am sorry, it was actually just an attempt at self-effacing humor. After your post I started furiously researching what a UC connection was and how it was used with orthodynamic headphones. I didn't want to sound stupid and summon the shovel. Talk about a backfire.

The best part about it is, various universities kept coming up in my search, and I was like. "No! I am looking for an adapter of some sort. Stupid google!"

Anyways... I am not Raphael. It is actually a misspelling of Dennis Miller's character from the movie "Bordello of Blood."

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

university of cincinnati. i had a classmate at UC named raphael who went by raif who move to the sacramento area, so i was just wondering. i can delete your account, this being my forum and all, if asking that question pisses you off, just let me know.

mr. snooty retort

This is taken care of, thanks a bunch raif.

wooow, cant wait to see what drivers are in here . Are you sure they are ortho though colin? No one lists that model as ortho, only 7x and 9x.....hmmm

Not sure, raif seems to think they are actually elecrets. I was assuming ortho just based on the model number. The KH-83 uses Fostex T10 drivers, and the KH-82 SHOULD just be the previous year version with just maybe minor changes. Either way, should be cool to have.

On each cup it reads:

Electret Direct Condenser Headphones

I was able to plug them in to my reciever's headphone jack and get music out of them.

To be quite honest, I really have no idea about vintage electrets or orthos, including whether or not trying to drive them through conventional amplifiers will damage the amplifier or headphones.

Electrets are like electrostatics, except they're passively charged -- I.E. one needs to play music through them to charge them up.

Nope, that would be self bias electrostatics which have a bias supply but that is powered by the secondary of the audio transformers. The ESP6 is just that. OTOH electrets use a diaphragm which has been treated so that it has a "built in" bias charge. There are variations from this (Toshiba back electret) but the concept is the same, materials inside the drivers are treated to give them potential so no need for a bias supply.

The condenser marking on the headphone means they are electret and if somebody could post a pic I can probably tell you who made them.

Sounds like they are an elecret with built in transformers! nice.

The KH-72 and 92 were Kenwood/Trio orthos from what is presumably the same line up, they use large drivers completely different to the KH-83 generation. (from photos they seem to be kinda Akai/T30-ish)

The KH-52 and 32 I think were dynamics.