Poor Man's FD01 (HSE A2000 modded)

Yeah, squishing tf out of the tape for a while ahead of inserting it or using something less compressible like @spoony 's felt, your plastic idea, or a sliced-up eartip stem, makes the first listen more representative of the long-term behavior.

While I like the treble timbre on the (modded) HiFiWalkers better, I concur with you about the bass and mids on these. The bass once reduced to a reasonable level still extends down low and does it right. I haven't tried these out of anything more ambitious than my phone and a DragonFly, but they've become my go-tos for the daily commute.

Edit: Also, I think there might be something in the suggestions of an audible break-in effect with these. If my aural memory is reliable and it's not expectation bias from being aware of the rumors, the mids seemed smootherer after a few weeks of use.

 

So I got curious, since I had been using these on and off since January and there has been talk about bass tubes collapsing and possible break-in effects. Still with the original tips and mods, which I hadn't changed in the meantime, I took a second measurement to compare it to the one I had taken five months ago:

Green = January, Blue = June:


Surprisingly consistent, I'd say.

 

I think bass stability is highly dependent on how much the tubes are precompressed, and the particular brand of tape used. In trying to get it to where bass levels wouldn't change over time right off the bat, it was easy to overshoot and overcompress the tube into a tight "bow tie". Then I'd have to start over with a fresh tube. It was an interesting exercise, but I ran out of patience and lost interest. Kudos to @james444 though for coming up with these cheap mods!

 

I needed to redo the tape mod because I felt like there was some wax on it after some months of using the pair.. only really made a tiny difference but yeah, its satisfying having at a fresh clean pair

 

I hope you don't mind me putting this here @james444 but these are my results (stock vs modded) with your modding method (similar material) + some complys (which made it much harder btw):

 

Looks good to me! How does it sound?

 

Much better, both the treble and the bass are so much milder (specially the later) and welcomed "airness". I don't understand why they didnt put a vent closer rather than further.