I do hear the shoutiness now Purrin
. Thank you for making a step by step guide for your mod!
Flats > Bowls > Taped bowls, that is in terms of shoutiness (and it also coincides with my personal preference for a stock HP-1000 and for the earliest John Grado headphones with HP-1000 drivers in them). I encourage anyone with a HP-1000 to try taped bowls.
Quick guide to taped bowls (when it's self-explanatory really): take 3M "Scotch" tape (the clear one, not the "Magic", translucent and lowly adhesive one that you can write on) and apply one stripe, and then another one next to it, if you like me bought a 12.7 mm wide tape (
http://www.rampantscotland.com/know/graphics/scotch_tape2a.jpg); what is important is to make sure to cover all the spongy "circumferential" area around the pads, and leave to hole or slots for the sound to escape.
If you have a wider tape it might take only one stripe (like in the photo below, of Tyll doing these pads), as long as you make sure it's long enough for both ends to touch/overlap one another.
The result
Donunus has had positive results with electrical tape (he's not the first one, I've seen many others on Head-Fi), mentioning the bass got even more voluminous, and preferred it to Scotch tape (source:
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/evaluation-grado-stock-and-modified-ear-pads#comment-482331). Electrical tape might be more comfortable too but will leave a residue if you remove it. I find Scotch taped bowls plenty comfortable.
Though the pads get Tyll's recommendation (over the other modded and unmodded Grado pads) in his Grado pads evaluation on Innerfidelity (
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/evaluation-grado-stock-and-modified-ear-pads), they don't have near as much effect on the HP-1000, other than successfully removing most if not all the shoutiness, which was the initial pursuit and why taped bowls get their mention by me in this 120+ days old thread. What they do more is increase overall listening comfort (/reduce fatigue), details (I swear I hear substantially more of them) and clarify bass (might increase its volume, but marginally); like I said they do all of that to a lesser extent than they also do for the John Grados.
For the John Grados I own, like a vintage RS-1 and SR200, though my problems are really with the 2005 SR325i, I tend to use flats to help with the brightness, but taped bowls are also very good and are better at keeping the drivers well placed on your ears (I also prefer their comfort a lot, when used in conjunction with Sennheiser PX-100 replacement foam pads [a PX-100 pad inside the T50RP stock pad's doughnut hole is also what I put to protect my ears from touching and getting irritated by the felt lined baffle; just a quick, efficient comfort fix idea for those still using T50RP pads]). In comparison, sound-wise I don't like stock bowls, they sound harsh, lack the bass of the taped bowls and the fullness of the flats.
I can't wait to receive my refurbished by Symphones with V4 gimbals V2.5 full Magnums, next week in the mail!
