AKG K701 Recable v. nV_Freak

[nVidia_Freak]

Steve did his a couple years ago and it's about time I got around to mine...

 

K701 #29959...Purchased new from Headroom in November of 2008...approaching approximately three thousand (3000!) hours of use so far...up until this day everything was original. As you might imagine, despite regular cleaning, things got a little dirty and beat up. As it was, the stock cable was falling apart from the stress reliefs on both ends and was being held together with some rather tacky Scotch tape. One of the headband clips was broken. Both of the earpads were showing some discolouring, mild shedding, were excessively soft, and the backs were as thing as the fronts of new pads...

 

 

 

Earlier last week I'd had enough and decided to spruce it up a little bit. New pads, a thorough cleaning, and a recable. On Monday on the way were a soldering station, solder, and the following parts related to the recable:

 

11' white Mogami 2534 4-wire cable

Neutrik NP3C-B 1/4" TRS plug

Neutrik white BSP9 cover

New earpads

 

Unbalanced, but what I have to make do with for use with my current amp, the Little Dot MK. V. I also considered making a y-split to each earcup instead of single sided, but, I think the single cable look suits the K701 very well and I to me the extra pull to the left isn't particularly noticeable. I also didn't care to demolish my headphones to get into the right earcup. I thought about black cable, but I decided against it since the K701 has more of a white scheme going for it, and, although contrast is nice, it looks so much nicer as small bits here and there. Ultimately I'm glad I did, because it looks very sexy.

 

 

 

It took quite a while longer than I expected because this was my first recable, I was also learning how to solder well, and the cable only has two wire colours and I had to mess around with which on one end was soldered to the tip on the other. I also had a bit of a scare when I couldn't get the left drive working, but I found that the little thin copper wire that goes from the signal pots to the driver had snapped. Luckily it snapped in the middle and not where the driver is sealed and a single copper wire from some chopped cable and a bit of solder fixed that right up.

 

And here it is:

 

 

 

 

Real thick cable, this Mogami stuff. The cap won't screw down all the way because of it, but make no mistake, it's tight!

 

 

 

Despite that it's not so thick to work without a strain relief, and here you can see my hi-tech black vinyl solution.

 

 

 

 

And a couple beauty shots for the road...

 

 

 

 

Now, you might've noticed that the plastic guides for the headband are taped. That's because one of them broke sometime last year, and I decided to make purposely break the other for it became symmetrical. Only a little bit of vertical stretch is missing, but I don't need all of it, plus it doesn't look so bad yet. The only thing I wish I did was get some white cable flex to protect the cable so it doesn't get dirty and get gunky like the stock gray cable did. That'll have to be for next time.

 

Whether or not the marginally nicer sound I'm hearing is just me enjoying the fruits of my labour or not I can't say, but it was enjoyable to do and I can certainly say that it looks very nice and was totally worth the effort.

 

Anyway, thanks for looking and happy listening!

[Celcius]

Great job, the K701's looked good before and now they look awesome.

[hardnrg]

Nice work dude... I especially like the vinyl strain relief

 

For the jack plug though, you could use an NP3X-B, as it has plenty of room for 1/4" diameter starquad cable, I could have left the strain relief on mine as it came instead of trimming it down, as the fit is not as super-tight as I initially feared (even with nylon braid over the cable).

 

If you wanted the white accents, there are white rings and strain reliefs:

 

 

 

I think if I was going to do mine again, or do another pair of headphones, I'd leave the nylon braid off, as it does add a slight stiffness and extra resistance to twisting, which makes it a bit of a pain to shift the cable sometimes. I use the same Van Damme Classic Quad for my interconnects now, and have done those with nylon braid and without (when I ran out). I much prefer the ones without nylon braid due to the supple, flexible cable, despite the ones with nylon braid looking more impressive.

 

I end up using the nylon braided interconnects for the permanent/fixed connections, and the plain ones for portable/occasional devices, so if your headphones are always in the same place, and that listening space never changes, then adding some sort of braided sleeving would be ok.

 

You know, I actually found photos I took of my earcup open, and the holes, hollows, etc. required to make it dual-entry. I'll try to find them again now and post them up to show how simple it is

 

aha! http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=160889&view=findpost&p=1906970

[battery]

stunning. and nrg knows all.

[SpeedCrazy]

Nice job.

[nVidia_Freak]

@Steve

 

I had considered the 3x but I preferred the look of the 3c. The only issue is the little plastic strain relief that's inside like you mentioned. I could probably trim this one down a tad and have it fit, maybe I'll take care of that tomorrow.

 

Even if I was on the move a lot with the K701 I would still want some braiding to protect the cable so I don't cut it/squish it and damage anything as well as keep it from getting all icky.

 

Other than that I just don't have any attachments small enough for my dremel to make the hole into the right earcup. I suppose I could try a plain cutter, but there really isn't a need for dual entry unless I decide to go balanced. With my current amp though that isn't necessary. So single entry unbalanced it remains!

 

[bishop245]

looks good