Sennheiser HD650 Love (Appreciation Thread)

Discussion in 'Headphone Measurements' started by purr1n, Sep 27, 2015.

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  1. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Need advice. I found on CAM https://www.canuckaudiomart.com/details/649736164-fs-sennheiser-hd650/
    Price is $200 US, the seller seem to be honest about the condition but, from the picture, something bad happened to those headphones. The crack like on the picture below can only happened IMO as the result of some serious trauma to the head of a person wearing HPs, or a drop from 20 feet on concrete. it is not the only damage. one of the clips on a headband is missing.
    The seller is saying the drivers are OK but can I have any confidence in the integrity of the drivers? New headband would cost me roughly $75. I can listen to those headphones before I buy it

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  2. Gazny

    Gazny MOT: ETA Audio

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    I would skip based on this color [​IMG]
     
  3. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    What does it mean?
     
  4. Case

    Case Anxious Head (Formerly Wilson)

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    @wormcycle , I'd wait. Pairs in good condition show up here every so often at that price or better, and you can trust a Friend.
     
  5. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    I trust you people I just want to know what does it mean based on color: are they fake, or there is a specific flavor of HD650 that is not good or it is related to the damage?
     
  6. Case

    Case Anxious Head (Formerly Wilson)

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    Maybe the drivers? Silver vs black. I think Tyll did a comparison. Solderdude has a big PDF on the different variants. I'm just saying I wouldn't buy that pair for that price.
     
  7. HotRatSalad

    HotRatSalad Friend

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    If they were black drivers I'd take a gamble. Everything else can be replaced. 6xx are cheap used otherwise, if not black drivers wait for something else. I'm sure someone here would sell a pair for a better deal. Got a used minty actual HD650 as a backup for the same price not long ago.
     
  8. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    there are at least 6 revisions of the HD650 known to me, but probably more in reality. I confirmed the below timelines by tracing historical posts on Head-fi.

    2003 - 2004: original release with the silver 'Reference' box. the baffle screen is a black, textured papery material

    [​IMG]

    2005 - 2006: second revision, the baffle screen is a black, permeable silk-like material

    [​IMG]

    2006 - 2012ish: third revision, the baffle screen is a white, taut wire mesh-like material

    [​IMG]

    2012ish - 2016ish: fourth revision, there are no visible changes to the headphones but the packaging changes to the new style Sennheiser boxes. I am pretty confident retail HD650s made after 2012 sound worse than those from the 2006 - 2012 period.

    [​IMG]

    2016ish - 2019: fifth revision, there are no visible changes to retail units but the HD6XX is released in conjunction with Massdrop. I am pretty confident retail HD650s made after 2016 sound worse than those from the 2012 - 2016 period.

    2019 - present: sixth revision, production moves to Romania. packaging and outward appearance of the headphones is changed. I am pretty confident retail HD650s made after 2019 sound worse than those from the 2016 - 2019 period.

    so as you can see, despite most people talking about black vs. white/silver screens, there are at least several versions of each. In my personal opinion, all pairs made before 2012, including early white/silver screens pairs, sound good. if all you care about is the classic HD650 sound with a smooth frequency response, I would choose any of these. obsessing over pre-2012 revisions is something for those with attention to minute differences because of their golden ears.

    In my personal opinion, all pairs made after 2012 are pizdec and sound worse. noticeably less resolving, noticeably more flaws to the frequency response and other subjective aspects of sound. YMMV.
     
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    Last edited: May 6, 2021
  9. m17xr2b

    m17xr2b Friend

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    Seeing a paper screen on a HD650 is really intriguing. I asked Axel at a CanJam about the paper screen and he said it was only available for the initial HD580 and some made it to the early HD600 but had to discontinue it due to supplier issues. He did mention the next iteration of HD580 with the black plastic mesh wasn't up to scratch and finally settled on the silver screens for the 600. A black paper screen 650 doesn't make sense time wise and the milky coloured driver was a staple of the early HD580 drivers.
     
  10. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    initially I thought the same thing, that it didn't make sense time wise, and when I wrote an overview of vintage HD600/650 I omitted the idea of paper HD650s entirely. later, several friends with old pairs showed me that they had this variant when I asked them to check their baffles.

    some searching on Head-fi indicated posts from 2004 where multiple owners initially had the paper baffle, but sent them in to Sennheiser for repair/RMA and they came back with the 'silk' screens. since the headphone came out in 2003, I can only conclude the paper was the first production version. it is impossible to know for sure though - even Sennheiser themselves cannot seem to keep track, they made so many of these things!
     
  11. dllmsch

    dllmsch Friend

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    http://www.erji.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2208100
    Here's a HD6X0 compendium from a chinese 6X0series diehard fan stating basically the same thing.
    Serial number~10k: black paper baffle
    Serial number~20k: black nylon
    Silver afterwards.
     
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  12. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    simply amazing, and the kind of resource I was searching for but unable to conclusively find on Western forums. thank you for sharing!

    this should silence people who say there have been minor or no differences over the years - it's simply impossible to believe! I agree with all of the posters assessments of the relative versions, it seems I have now owned almost all of them at one time or another.

    edit: an additional note that it is not just the material composition of the screens, whether or not there is a copper ring in the driver assembly, the color of the voice coil wire; but also the actual wire inside the headphone cable, the material composition of the earpads, and the density of front foam have ALL changed over time.

    fascinating, as these things all contribute to the sound in their individual ways, and not many pairs out there will have survived with their original earpads and foam. I am also glad the author confirmed there are at least two versions of the 'skinny' HD600 cable, as I thought I was imagining things when my 1997 pair had a much better sounding stock cable than a later one.

    reading this topic has only re-affirmed my belief that Sennheiser engineers truly understood what they were doing in tuning products to give a particular sound character and make the absolute most of what is possible from headphone listening, in a way that no other firm has done before or since. unfortunately they have lost their way.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2021
  13. redryder74

    redryder74 New

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    Hi all,

    Apologies if this was posted before. There's this black foam behind the driver under the spider-cage. My 15 yr old HD650 foam has deteriorated and melted, and pieces of it dropped into the driver. I managed to clear the foam away, but I also scraped off all the foam in the process so that it wouldn't happen again. Now all bass seems to have completely disappeared.

    I tried cutting pieces of foam at home and stuck them into where the foam was, but the bass is still gone. The soundstage is wider, but the phones are unlistenable now. Anyone managed to fix this?
     
  14. ext1

    ext1 MOT: Jupiter Audio Research

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    Essentially to get it back to stock you would need to put a circular piece of foam back into the cage, but the cage can’t be removed other than cutting it entirely, so it would be very tough to put it back in.
    If you are determined to do this I would advise getting the foam into the center of the cage fully compressed, then letting it re expand into shape.
    Be also advised that I’ve seen some units with one thick foam inside or two thin foams sandwiched together inside. This would matter if you want to get the stock sound back as much as possible.
     
  15. Marvey

    Marvey Super Friend

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    If the bass went away, then the driver got damaged. You can try blowing or sucking into the hole to fix.

    Bass actually increases without the foam. You can order replacement driver assemblies from Sennheiser.
     
  16. redryder74

    redryder74 New

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    That explains a lot, I tried many different types of replacement foam but it didn't improve the bass. How would blowing or sucking into the hole fix it?
     
  17. ext1

    ext1 MOT: Jupiter Audio Research

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    That’s to put the driver back into it’s spherical shape. Your situation implies that your driver is crushed down, which can be fixed by blowing a burst of air into the cage side of the driver. There’s a video of Tyll doing this in a video. (Search innerfidelity Tyll HD650 on YT)
     
  18. Marvey

    Marvey Super Friend

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    Also sucking up debris that may have been stuck into the gap, or hoping a tweaked voice coil got magically bent back into shape. The latter is a long shot. Even you can get the bass back up, there could still be something else wrong with it. This is all based on personal experience. :)
     
  19. gixxerwimp

    gixxerwimp Professional tricycle rider

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    Cool, I hadn't seen this before. Funny what happens when he tries to perform microsurgery at around 8:15.

     
  20. Beefy

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    I saw this reddit post yesterday. The suction is a common solution. But for me, I've never felt that attracted to my audio gear to get intimate with it....
     

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