Sitting watching an aviation blog on YouTube this morning when I thought.... something's wrong with that bloke's microphone..... but no, it wasn't HIS fault, it was MINE! My lovely Beyer DT990 PRO headphones had a problemo.
The Beyer DT990 Headphones. Easily the most comfortable and excellent phones I've ever owned. Comfortable enough to wear all day.
A quick look at the problem. Not Good!
To get the headphones apart was simple. A small screw on the swivel fork mount between the headphone and overhead mount and you can slide the unit out. I only removed the offending one.
To get inside, pop off the velour ear pads, they are just stretched over a small ledge, and carefully pry off the plastic ring that holds the earpiece in place. A moulded lug on the outside of the ring is THE place to start. Once you pry up the lug a little, a thin screwdriver blade can be carefully run around the edge to pop the ring free. With the ring freed, carefully pry out the driver unit.
A view of the driver unit.
I carefully unsoldered each of the wires. Watch out.... do this quickly with not too much heat!
I cut a few inches off the end of the curly cable where it enters the phones. and peeled off the cover. I've found that cables almost always break close to the end and given that these phones are a good number of years old, it made sense to sacrifice a couple of inches of wire for future reliability.
This is when my problems started! I couldn't get the cable back through the grommet! NOTHING worked until I remembered I had a tub of silicone grease in the shed. With a little grease applied, I managed to push the cable through the grommet and into the body of the headphones. You'll notice the cable colours don't match the wire colours at the solder tags!
A quick shuftie at Canford Audio's website found the wanted wiring diagram above and I used that.
Goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway! Be careful not to overheat the tags when you re-make the connections!
To lock the cable in place, I cleaned off the residual silicone grease with kitchen roll and a bit of Isopropanol then placed a tight wrap of 4 turns of very stiff silver plated wire over the cable with a small blob of epoxy resin for good measure.
All back together and working 100%.
I'm a happy bunny because I love these phones. Mine are DT990PRO 250R types and from memory, I paid about £140 for them quite a few years ago. They are still in production and a bit cheaper now from most suppliers. They are an absolute joy to use.
Just out of interest, I put them on my kitchen scales. 370grams, so not lightweight, but when wearing them they seem to weigh nothing at all, such is their comfort level. Their sound quality speaks for itself. Just simply the best pair of cans I've ever owned.
So glad they are fixed!
Until next time, 73.
Al. GM1SXX
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