Yeah, I know someone who melted the driver from trying to solder new wires. You just don’t. I’ve had that experience with Koss headphones, so it sorta carries over to this one.
Just reuse the wires that comes with the headphones. It’s less of a hassle.
Lol, had to deal with something similar modding my T90’s. I was just going to open them to see if I could tame the sibalance and apparently the glue they used to hold the little pcb the voice coil wires attach to failed and it was flopping around loose. It ripped one of those tiny wires out. Luckily I had a thin enough tip for my soldering iron to run a wire in to the driver and got them fixed but the solder joints look terrible because of my fear of melting the driver. Thankfully they still work though.
My amps played the DT880 well. I especially preferred them on my tube amp which is single ended. The main reason for me doing a cable mod for the DT880 was that I hated that long and heavy non-detachable stock cable.
I had the spare parts and ZMF compatible cables so I went with mini 4-pin xlr, otherwise I’d have to source 2x 3.5mm or 2x 4-pole 2.5mm which I have laying around and I’d rather not.
The 4-pin mini xlr I had are inside mounting, and those turn out pretty clean.
I’ve decided to do this mod myself, and have ordered 3.5mm sockets. However, I saw that you only used two of three connectors to connect them with the driver. Could you perhaps help me label the connectors i bought (which one is + and which one is -).
Here’s a picture:
Typically the tip (T) is + and the shaft (S) is -. Headphones that use dual-entry TRS plugs into the cups don’t have the ring ® connected to anything.
EDIT: the automatic changing of an R in parentheses to a registered trademark symbol is irritating sometimes.
Easiest way would be to grab a multimeter and a 3.5mm cable to map what number on the back corresponds to what.
I would wire them up so Tip and Gnd are for the left driver, Ring and Ground are for the right. That way you don’t have to make adapters when using them with a non-custom cable (any 3.5mm splitter would work).
For me at least this is what it found with my multimeter. It is easier if you have a multimeter and you can confirm the continuity.
So again, middle is ground. 2 should be left/right hot on a dual 3.5mm cable.
Right. On Friday ill try the multimeter method. Sending pics here when they’re done. Thank you for the fast replies!
Drilled three holes in the left cup, but it’s working. The sound from the Taurus MKII is sensational!
Thank you, thank you for this guide 
I think im enjoying this headphone more than my Ananda, for classical music.
You’re welcome! Looking good there! The sugru really fixes it well.
Yeah, when modded and able to take more power in from balanced outputs, the DT880’s are one of most detailed headphones under $500.
Dt 880 and Sundaras have the most details I’ve heard under 500. They are both great to pair with warmer,darker headphones too, edition xx,nighthawks, etc. And a nice detailed closed back are the elegia, which you can find under 500 too. Good stuff! Just my own headphone experience. 
I think the k712 and 6xx can probably get thrown in there too 
Great guide! Really detailed and super helpful with the wiring diagrams. I’ve also created a video walkthrough on this process using my original single sided method, but on both sides, effectively doing the same thing that you posted here but with my “snap in” jacks
Oh boy! Your original how-to served as a starting point to what I did, so thank you for doing just that! The new balance mod video would help a lot of people too cause it helps illustrate better than my word-vomit.
Yeah, I opted for smaller jacks because I wasn’t sure how much space I had to work with. The snaps-ons look much neater too. I just thought a drill was less fussy and I wanted a bit more angle instead of going straight down.
I finished my DT880-600 balanced mod today!
Sugru does work really well plugging the existing holes in the cups:
One word of caution if you’re gonna try this…I did make one mistake that ended up not being a problem because of the highly symmetirc design Beyer put into these. See if you can spot it:
If you noticed the red electrical tape - which I’m using to mark the right channel - is covering the plugged stock cable hole, YOU WIN! I wasn’t paying close enough attention and drilled the new jack hole on the wrong side of that stock cable opening as viewed front to back. Oops. But, because of the new dual entry and pretty much everything being symmetric, the fix was easy. Just make what was the left cup the right cup. I even was able to flip the headband around so that the “R” on the head band is on the same side as that red piece of electrical tape.
So far so good. Everything works. Both SE and balanced cables I have on hand are playing fine.
Haha, I can see that happening too. I was very careful with mine. What I did was remove the pads, put the cups together, then mark both sides roughly where I wanted to drill with a white marker. That’s why that weird cross shape in my pictures as I roughly figured out the best place to drill.
Glad you managed to fix yours without too much trouble. Looking very good there too.
Thank ya thank ya. Your guide was also quite helpful. Mine was wired the same way yours was, fwiw.
Hey guys. I have a 2011-12 pair of DT880 600 ohms that I’m considering balance modding. I open the headphone and I see this. Any thoughts on what I should do in regards to ground?
Edit: Holy shit I found a Head-fi thread from 2006 with this exact configuration. I think I’m saved:
I was going to say. They wouldn’t have changed much from before so white would still be hot and whatever else colour would be ground.
A reference like that for older DT880’s would come handy too.
That’s what I was hoping. But the issue now is that the ground isn’t a shielded wire. I think it’s just a copper coil? Not sure how I should approach this. Maybe I should buy some heatshrink.
My pair had a small yellow dot next to the + driver terminal on both channels.
