Thank ya thank ya. Your guide was also quite helpful. Mine was wired the same way yours was, fwiw.
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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:
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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.
You can use heatshrink. You could also carefully desolder them, then use other wires as well if have spare on hand (like from the unused 3.5mm cable once cut it off).
If I were you, i won’t unsheath the cable going from the driver once I cut it. I’d just cut it to length, strip, then solder the wires as is to the jacks.
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I doubt you’ll notice it
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Yea about to finish the mod, will see when it cools down
Is it just a small puncture in white damping material?
Yes, and lucky enough i have 2 pairs right now on hand, so i can compare
It’s mostly likely nothing. If I’m seeing correctly it’s on the ear side, so there should be very little, if any sound wave interaction at that location. If it were on the cup side it’s more likely (but still very improbable) to be a problem, I would guess.
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Should be fine. The foam is just dampening material. As long as its not a gaping hole and you flatten it down, it should keep doing its job.
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Thanks, yea listening now i don’t hear anything off
Thinking about getting the 880s and doing this mod, already have a balanced cable for T60s so I was going to use this 4 pole 3.5mm jack https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OGLEE4C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
OP was saying these balanced on 789 will power them properly… Just wondering if anyone can confirm this before I pull the trigger.
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Yes balanced 789 can power DT880 600ohms fine.
FYI, if you’re doing this mod and plan to reuse a small length of the stock cable that comes into the left cup - an understandable decision so you don’t have to solder directly to the driver - be aware that those tiny stock wires do not solder well to whatever jack pins you intend to attach. I originally reused a small length of those stock wires for the reason just mentioned. However, I was beginning to notice a very slight channel imbalance biased away from the side where I reused a small length of the cheap incoming wire and toward the side where I harvested a small length of the wire that connected the cups in the stock configuration. I popped open the weaker side and sure enough one of those solder joints was beginning to fail. This time I got braver and replaced that stock wire altogther. Now it’s 
. If you feel up to it, I recommend harvesting a short length of the wire that connected the two cups and soldering that onto the driver on the stock left side. The wire that originally went through the headband is of a much higher quality than the incoming stock wire, it also solders to the jack pins much more readily. However, only do this is you’re comfortable soldering and can be quick. The 600 ohm voice coils have super thin wires. If you hold heat on there too long you can melt that thin voicecoil wire and fuse some of the strands together. You don’t have to be lightning quick, but if you mess something up, walk away and let things cool down before you keep applying more heat.
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Yeah that’s the alternative way of doing it. I had similar experiences with the Koss PortaPro/KPH30i internal wires, but because of that using the DT880 wires is a cinch.
Basically you need to be patient in soldering the tips because the molten solder will melt the plastic and tip the wire at the same time. If you do it right (the solder won’t easily come off), then you should have no issues when soldering the internal wires to the jack.
And yes, the entire reason I prefer to do this is because using new wires involves the risky method of desoldering them from the driver unit. Prior to my attempt, I knew of other people who basicaally destroyed the voice coils because they left the solder iron too close for too long.
Rather than risking that, it’s safer to practice better soldering techniques on the internal wires than close to the driver coils. If you want to be really safe, you can cut those internal wires longer, so you can snip it off should you stuff up tinning the tip.
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Yep, it’s lower-risk to re-use the stock cable for sure. I’m not an expert solderer so I think that was some of the issue. Between the original balance mod where I did reuse stock cable and then doing this fixed, I completely recabled a set of TH-X00 and soldered new wires onto the drivers’ terminals. That led to an improvement in sound, too (the X00 stock cables were worse than Beyer’s, and Beyer’s are bad). So it was ALSO kinda bugging me that there was a different level of quality of cable in either cup on the DT880. I had heard of the risk of fusing the 600 ohm voice coil so I knew to be careful going in.
Still the disclaimer: only solder near the driver if you are very careful and have at least some soldering experience.
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