Grado SR60i Mods

I had a sick day from work today and couldn't sleep. I put on my headphones, the Grado SR60i, to listen to some music and found myself wishing they had better bass. I've read of several mods in the past and decided it wouldn't be too hard to do these on a sick day.

Coin Mod

This one was very simple. All that is to be done is to remove the ear cushions. Place a coin in the middle of the cushion, press down hard and use a knife to cut around the perimeter of the coin. The point of this mod is to remove a filter between your ear and the driver.  You can see below that a grill cloth still remains on top of the plastic. Some people appear to remove this cloth as well, but I intend to make wooden cans to replace the plastic ones and decided to leave the cloth in place for now.

Vent and Damp Mod

This next mod is what brings out the bass. After all is done, I seem to have a little harsher high frequency sound. I would have added some felt for dampening the plastic chamber if I had some, but since I intend to build wood cans I felt this would do for now.  Overall the sound is much improved with these mods.

1. First I had to pull open the plastic cans. I used a hair dryer to heat the plastic and glue and then had to use some force to pull them apart.

2. Once the cans are apart you'll notice that there are 10 holes lined around the driver and a cloth covering all 10 holes.  Use a screw driver and gently twist and puncture the cloth over 2-3 of the holes. Some folks appear to knock all 10 out. I punched out 3 on each side and was happy with the outcome. This may be personal preference. I also affixed a small amount of blue-tak on the back of each driver to help dampen the sound. I was sure not to cover the holes on the driver.

3. The last thing I did was punch out the plastic grill on the front of each can. Grado glues a small plastic circle in the middle of the grills and I was concerned I didn't have a good way to dampen this. I will probably find something interesting to put in place of the plastic grill at some point.

My first test track of the Gloaming by Radiohead and the bass was amazing!