I have been reading too much about headphones. I had difficulty in buying replacement pads for my second hand Beyerdynamic T1 that I bought for hygiene reasons, and I wondered about replacement pads for my Sennheiser HD800S, which with the change of ownership of that company, seem hard to find.
A simple question. How often if at all do you replace the earpads on your headphones?
The instructions all say once every 1-2 years, but I have never changed the pads on my old Beyer Amiron’s, or the cans I owned before.
I’ve not bought used headphones, but I replaced my Beyerdynamic Custom One pads when they became degraded. Dekoni make pads which are designed to fit a range of makes and models.
With leather pads a touch of Renapur dressing should restore condition. Spare pads are available for ZMF and are also used to alter the sound, but they are not cheap.
Four years, but they had almost daily wear as I bought them to teach on line during lockdown then listen to audio in bed. The padding disintegrated. They are like new with fresh pads.
Sennheiser used to stock lots of spares for their cans. One of their appeals to me. However, i tried to get replacement ear cups for my momentum 2 cans but with no luck. These were only 5 or 6 years old and were falling apart.
At least the headbands are changable on most sennheisers. My focal ckears are fixed and grey in colour. From day 1 i used a protective material over the headband, otherwise it would have gone quite discoloured. The designers at focal clearly gave that part no thought.
Beyerdynamic stock spares on their own on line shop. You can buy an amazing amounts of spare parts. Sennheiser parts can be found around the web, with difficulty. Beyerdynamic are a family owned outfit. Sennheiser are now part of a large multi division corporate entity.
Sennheiser apparently was loosing money on their consumer goods division, ( thanks to the flood of Chi Fi phones) and in 2021 this division was sold to a Swiss company who’s main buisness is hearing aids. So it looks like the reasons spares are hard to come by is that supply chains have been disrupted. Maybe they do not care about headphones, but care about Sennheiser’s expertise.
Seeing the ear cups do not have a terribly long life I hunted down a pair of replacement cups to keep as spares. Audio Sanctuary in the UK were the only place that seemed to have a pair in stock in Europe. If my earpads on my HD800S cans stay stuck to my ears in four to eight years time I have the insurance of a €70 spare to keep a €1400 pair of headphones working.
Ive got time to save my pennys for those Focal Ultimate cans, which I am told are the best of the best at human price levels.
I do a lot of headphone listening as my wife hates jazz, or screeching saxophones as she call my music.
When my Beyerdynamic SH cans arrived I sterilized the headband with hydrogen peroxide, and ordered new pads.
I consulted the internet, and the consensus is that you can wash earpads, in mildly soapy water. Hydrogen peroxide is recommended as a sterilizing agent. I had nothing to lose, so I sterilized them first and then gave them a good wash. In our 40° summer heat they were dry in a couple of hours.
Once dry they were like new. You can in fact extend the life of earpads, if you wash out the accumulated sweat and stuff.
Do your internet research first people, as it might not work with leather or some other materials.
Audio Sanctuary in the UK actually had the HD800S earpads in stock. So I have a pair in the post ,that I can use if the present ones wear out.
Hope the new owners of Sennheiser, get their act together and start stocking the replacement parts that ought to be readily available for a set of headphones that cost so much.
Maybe, we should check up on the state and ownership of companies who’s gear we are thinking of buying. Serious brands get sold, maybe with the intent of just stripping out the expertise. The story of AKG another famous brand of headphones is a good case. They were bought out by a Samsung division. Staff in Austria were sacked, and production transferred overseas. I guess lots of HiFi brands have suffered a similar fate in recent years.
Here in Italy it has been really hot. I have been using the washed and sterilized pads that came with my SH Beyerdynamic T1, as I did not care if they get sweat damaged. Now we are back to normal temperatures, I put the new pads on the T1, and was pretty surprised how much new pads improved the sound quality of these headphones. The slightly boomy bass has gone and the sound is much more consistent across the board. I now in some ways prefer these cans to the HD800S, the two are very close in sound quality.
So maybe the solution of washing pads that I saw recommended in a lot of places, is not such a good idea after all. It is amazing how minor details change sound with our HiFi gear.
Just a suggestion, there are some very good and affordable replacement high quality pads that you can try such as e.g. from Brainwavz, I believe they do Beyerdynamic. I just happen to have a couple of them, super soft and comfortable too.
