My DIY Grado clones

[Thaddeus Smith]

I'm moving to headphones for my desktop rig and I was initially going to grab a pair of Grado 325e. I like open-back headphones and they're a decent mid-tier offering, from a company with philosophies and sound signatures that align well with Klipsch. So I started digging around Head-Fi and, like Alice, stumbled down a rabbit hole. Then, I thought about buying a less expensive pair and upgrading to suit. Now, for just a little bit more cash, I'm building Grado clones from scratch that should outperform what I was originally planning to buy, be wholly unique to me, and I get to have some fun putting it all together. Here's the first components..

 

I made the cable with parts I had laying around.. the innards are canare mini star quad cable and a neutrik plug. The mahogany cups were made buy a boutique "grado mod" shop in Malaysia and I'll be purchasing a rich black leather headband from them as well.

 

 

 

The headband skeleton is coming from a guy up in washington state that has a few tweaks to keep the gimbals more securely in place. I'm still deciding between the stock Grado gimbals or replacement aluminum gimbals from a guy in Florida.

 

The drivers will be from a boutique shop out of South Africa that has recently come into the scene with very favorable reviews - "Nhoord Red" - if you're curious. 

 

I'm starting with Grado "L-cush" pads for the foam, but will likely grab a set of "G-cush" pads as well to see which I prefer.

 

I've gone back to using my raspberry pi for audio playback because it's cleaner sounding than my primary computer. I'm also going to continue using my SEP tube amp - with a little guidance from Maynard I was able to construct this as an "adaptor" to the wire taps. It's complete overkill, but I had the chassis on hand from another project and as such didn't cost me anything.

 

 

 

 

 

I'll continue to update as I have parts trickle in. I'm probably another month or so from completion - I was hoping to sell my RP-160's more quickly to fund the project - but it also takes a couple of weeks to get some of these international parts.

 

Here's some Head-fi links if you're curious:

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/119314/post-your-grado-mods

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/576717/grado-modders-go-magnum

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/817108/grado-modders-go-nhoord

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/793136/grado-modders-go-ypsilon-elleven-acoustica-drivers-and-builds-thread

[The Dude]

This is awesome.

Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk

[jimjimbo]

Dang Michael, those look kind of uncomfortable to stick in your ears....

 

But seriously.....sounds as though you've got a few "boutique" producers involved, would love to see your final product.

[CECAA850]

Fun thread.  Thanks for posting.

[Thaddeus Smith]

Ordered the rest of my parts tonight, so I should have these ready to play within a couple of weeks. I'm "creating" very little on these headphones, except for the cable and final assembly, but here's a list of where I got everything and the effort involved to put it all together:

 

Headband: http://turbulentlabs.com/grado-onyx-manta/

Cups: http://turbulentlabs.com/batch-008-cups/

Drivers: http://www.nhoord.com/products/

Cable: sourced mostly from Markertek and a little bit of ebay for shrink tubing and techflex

Headband assembly ("deal 6"): http://www.headphile.com/page7.html 

Aluminum gimbals: http://www.rholupat.com/products/black-gimbal.html

Earpads: http://www.4ourears.net/Grado_L_cushions_p/4e-lcush.htm

 

 

There's several different options for all of these components, this was just the combo I landed on after reading reviews and comparisons on Head-fi, along with the overall aesthetic I wanted. The leather headband and aluminum gimbals are purely vanity items.

 

In the meantime, I traded my RP-160M's for this little DAP/DAC. It's of better quality than the DAC I was using and the fact that it can be a standalone amp (the headphones are only 32ohms) and portable player were intriguing. It did have one unfortunate side effect: it illustrates how noisy the tube amp is with headphones, so I'm not sure how much I'll be using it in this application. To be fair, I was shoehorning it into use because I didn't want to spend cash on another dedicated amp.

 

Ibasso DX-80, full details and specs here:  http://ibasso.com/cp_xq_dy.php?id=304

 

Important things are support for up to DSD 128, a dedicated line out, dedicate coaxial out, dual SD slots with support for up to 2TB SD storage (once those 1TB exist), and the fact that it can be used as a DAC. Very versatile and simple.