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Dear god, that headband is something else.  It actually looks like someone raided a dumpster for scrap metal and screwed it together to make a headband.  This has got to be a new standard of Chinesium for me.

Shepherd's Pie...sort of -- used ground turkey instead of lamb and beef culinary stock, but otherwise...NAILED IT!  It came out delicious.  Didn't overwhelm with any one particular spice (I'm looking at you, the usual suspects garlic and black pepper), but it was sweet and savory and the carrots came out perfectly al dente...just...(chef's kiss)... Yes, I realize I'm kissing myself.

When I've had time recently I've assembled a few more DIY electrostatic headphones:   First off, the last of the Superex chassis I had in stock so I designed a new stator design for them: This has been a long running project to to make drivers and test the various aspects in a controlled housing.  They are not ideal as they are mostly closed but I got a bunch of them for next to nothing years ago.  New stators with some minor tweaks and a protective grill too: These are not really built for sound quality but to test different coatings, distortion tests on drivers and all that jive but still fun to have a pile of these here.   Since the Superex is just a Beyerdynamic clone, I found some DT880's with blown drivers that could also work: The need to be modified internally a bit to open up the back but nothing major.   Different stators on this one and the drivers have to be at a 45° angle to get it all to fit (not that it matters at all) but same basic idea as above Round them off with some nice leather pads, silicone 6 core cable and my new Stax plugs that I've been refining recently.  These do sound better than the Superex shell as the backwave is more open.   Finally, the second of those Kiwi Ears headphones was fitted with drivers: No major changes here except I didn't use the bayonet plate to fix the earpads, I rather slipped the stock pads over the lip of the housing which helped a lot Also some simple tweaks to ensure better baffle seal: Thick cloth tape here and it works nicely.  These are okey sounding headphones for next to no money at all.    

In other news from China, here we have the fake SR-X1: I've known about these for a while and I finally bought a set as they are so cheap... and very, very rough.  They didn't arrive with any earpads but the knockoff leather X1 pads you can find in Asia do work nicely.  They are clearly not a 1:1 clone and that headband is something really special in terms of being pure and utter garboleum but it was stupid cheap to add it to them.   Housing is 3D printed and quite badly done but look at that cable... to make the 3D print soft and pliable it looks like an absolute mess.   Same on this end but the actual plug is nice quality.   Nothing wrong with those pins and the spacing seems just fine.   Better look at the actual cable used, it is pretty stiff and unwieldy but at least it is 6 parallel cores so the capacitance shouldn't be too bad.  It's too short though at 1.5M or so and who knows what the voltage rating is on that thing.  I did order a couple of extra ones (and some extra housings too) so I'll zap it with some high voltage and see how it holds up.  Anything that can't withstand 1kV AC over an extended time isn't really suitable for this role.   Better shot if the actual plug, nothing wrong with those pins and it even has the cutout relief for the bias pin which I always skip on my own plugs.   The driver face and the electrodes are etched aluminum or stainless steel.  Not sure which as I haven't taken them apart yet.   This headband was clearly an afterthought and that metal bends if you look at the wrong way but it does function... kinda.   Here we can see the assembly "quality"... or very much lack there of.  The housing does not fit correctly together and you might ask... why was this printed in white and the painted?  Well I paid extra for the paint... but whey when there are excellent black filaments.  Dunno and why not resin print this?  Done right and that is superior to injection molding.   More of this ace paintjob and the headphones falling apart but nice gold pins there as well.   As for how they sound... well sound is produced but something is very wrong inside those drivers.  They are far more inefficient than a stock unit and there is audible distortion... quite a bit of it actually.  It gets worse and worse as you push the volume to normal levels for me so I'll have to take them apart and see if the drivers are misaligned.  They are balanced between the channels though and at low level listening... these are not the worst ever.    Now all of this is pretty terrible but clearly a work in progress and not done by some estat fanatics as one would suspect.  The drivers don't really work (well they do produce some sound) and the quality is downright atrocious but funny enough, that crap cable does have strain reliefs on both ends which the aftermarket Stax cables do not have.  Needless to say, best to stay away from crap too...