Beyer by meri (a story of headphone modification)

Communities DIY Corner
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So we all know about Beats by Jerry, but what about Beyer by meri?

TL;DR: I more or less copied the shell of the DT990, made some adjustments, and 3D printed. Have not had a sound test yet.

EDIT: Now with more .stl!



(disregard the improper aspect ratio, Discourse likes to throw a fit with some images for whatever reason)

So I own(ed) a pair of Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. They were my first pair of open back headphones and I instantly fell in love with them, problem being they’re ugly as sin. After a little while the pads wore out (a very little while) and I decided to branch out to see what else is out there. I ended up picking up a pair of the AKG K712 Pro for quite a good price, and it turns out I like them far more than the Beyers. So the Beyers sat for quite a while unused. I decided to see if I could mod it for a detachable cable, and long story short I kinda sorta buggered that, but didn’t. The next (il)logical step in my mind was why not redo the whole thing? So I did. Five revisions later and I pretty much have a shell that I could 3D print and has a perfect fit for everything.

Slightly out of order guts of the DT990:

CAD porn of the poor first revision:

CAD porn of the last revision:

Sketch used to revolve and create most of the body:

Build log coming when I can get the proper wire to finish everything.

5 Likes
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This looks like the headphone dream. Your favorite drivers with a nice comfy headband like the 3D wing design from Audio Technical or AKG.

Keep us updated.

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Ordered the wiring I need last night, so that should be in in the next week or two hopefully. I lost my last 3.5mm jack however, so I need to get some of those now :\

On the bright side this was the first time I used Verbatim filament, and it actually worked really well. There's some artifacting on the underside of the lip, but that would happen no matter what filament I used I think. Everything else is really good.

@Vox-L I'd love to replace the headband because it simply is not comfortable on my head, but I don't have any headbands I could use at the moment. If I had a spare AKG headband I'd figure out a way to use it in a heartbeat.

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You should try and make your own electrostatic headphones.

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Although fun, I'm not sure I have hands delicate enough to not trash the diaphragm for electrostatic headphones in an instant.

1 Like
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It's pretty tough to build them normally without damaging the diaphragm.

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Interesting project. I, too, was thinking of designing and 3D printing headphones.

Although in my case I'd be shooting for something low profile that I'd be able to wear outdoors. KSC75 drivers, maybe, with HM5 pads that I already have laying around.

The headband is my main concern, personally. I would love to simply source a headband assembly from something like the HyperX Cloud or Beyer's DT 770, but it seems awfully pricy to do so if it's even possible.

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I'm actually half tempted to get a headband for a Shure SRH840 or Fostex T40 since they are available, but I'm not sure.

As an aside, the website that has the headbands also sells a whole slew of headphone drivers. Maybe something like the Fostex headband with Beyer T50P drivers?

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Hm, those look usable. I guess if 3D cad and printing fails me, I'll have a fallback option.

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need stl files to print lol

is it still the thing the best headphones have 3 drivers for each frequency range?

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Don't think so. Multiple drivers in full sized headphones is mostly a gimmick. You end up with all the different drivers being bad at everything, instead of the single drivers being good in multiple areas. (bass, high frequencies, sound stage, imaging, etc.)
In theory, multiple drivers should sound great. However, you have to factor in that you would need to add in crossovers to divide the signal up into the different frequency ranges, and add that to the headphone. Also, your headphones would have to accommodate enough space for the crossover, the multiple drivers, etc.

TL:DR I haven't listened to a multiple driver pair of heaphones that was any good.

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To the OP, this is really awesome. Can't wait to see the finished product!
Have you ever been to a headphone meetup? I'm sure the guys at those events would love to hear them and give feedback.

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Looks like Thingiverse requires new users to wait 24 hours before uploading files for whatever reason. YouMagine doesn't care though.

And as mentioned above, multi-driver headphones kinda suck. Too much volume for too little benefit. Multi-driver speakers are pretty much required though.

@behindthetimesgamer Thanks! Never been to a headphones meetup, but most meetups are generally a solid 3+ hour drive away anyways. I might poke around and see if anybody wants to try them out when I have finished them though.

1 Like
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So yeah, definitely lost that 3.5mm jack I need to finish up. Going to be like another week again :(

I did get the cables in, so now I have a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable that I could probably strangle an elephant with, so that's nice :)

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Very cool project!