Removing the baffle/grill from HiFiMan HE300's speaker - what will safely work ?

[freddi]

I have an old HE300 with one speaker fried and wish to remove the old drivers and retrofit with new drivers. What is the proper way to separate the driver from its baffle / grill without damage to the baffle ?

Also, what 50mm drivers might you suggest for the retrofit ? - There's several direct from China and also a Peerless Tymphany which should physically fit.

 

[Galu]

What is the proper way to separate the driver from its baffle / grill without damage to the baffle ?

I presume you want to separate the driver from the rear of the exposed plastic baffle shown in the attached photograph.

Check out this repair/service manual. N.B. I haven't tried to download myself.

Hifiman He 300 Repair Service Manual User Guides Ebooks 2019 PDF Book

 

[freddi]

Many thanks - (that site wants my bankcard info so am leery)

 

[Galu]

And rightly so! Steer clear!

Is the problem that the driver is glued to the baffle?

 

[freddi]

yes - its my kid's headphone and I don't have it at hand to see if the bond can be broken with a hobby knife. Although fairly smooth, HE300 to my ears had poor low frrequency power handling with lots of doubling. (unless it was the amplifier at the time being severely under-powered - ?)

 

[sgrossklass]

Although fairly smooth, HE300 to my ears had poor low frrequency power handling with lots of doubling. (unless it was the amplifier at the time being severely under-powered - ?)

Are these the original HE-300s? Those were a bit meh in general. If you look at their measurements, frequency response is a bit crummy, and level handling is not their greatest forté in general (though there is worse). Rev. 2 was noticeably improved.

Unfortunately, a lot in headphone design is about enclosures and pads. Hoping to improve matters without any experience or measurement facilities is being very optimistic at the very least.

Thanks for the pointer to the Tymphany drivers though (you rarely see any data on headphone drivers). It's the HPD series. The 40 mm one appears to have some proper headphone EQ (free or diffuse field), the 50 mm one just has a generally upwards-sloping frequency response (which would be compensated by proximitely effect in use, I guess) with high peak sensitivity, indicating high efficiency and low moving mass. Both have vented magnets for low Fs, as usual in headphone drivers.

 

[xrk971]

Are HE300’s dynamic drivers and not planar magnetic? I have He400i’s which are planars, and sound quite nice when driven from an appropriately powerful amp.