Advice on Beyerdynamic DT990 repair?

[David Finton]

I'm considering having my Beyerdynamic DT 990 headphones
repaired. I really like these, but the lead going into
the right earpiece developed a short this week. In
addition, the earpads are basically gone. I'm wondering
if it makes sense to spend $105 ($35 labor, the rest split
between the parts costs for the cable and earpads) to
repair these headphones.

I think I paid about $200 for these, way back in the late
'80's. I'm not sure what it would cost to replace them with
whatever is the current equivalent. Also, do headphones
usually degrade or fail in other ways with time, aside from
the ear surrounds and cable?

Thanks in advance!

David Finton

[CCSman]

Personally, I don't think it's worth the money. I owned a pair of these for a
while. I sold them for a cheaper, but better pair of AKG's. You can get a lot
of headphone for $100 - $150. And they wouldn't be from the 1980's

[David Finton]

ccs...@aol.com (CCSman) writes:

Okay. This is exactly the information I'm looking for.
Which pair of AKG's did you buy--and how were they better than the DT 990?

Would this depend on what kind of music you like, or were they just
better in every way? I listen mostly to classical and jazz, but it
goes from solo piano to brass quintet to big orchestra with Mahler
and Bruckner. I thought the DT 990s gave me a pretty clear window
into the music, maybe just a little hot on the high end.

Do you really think old phones are obselete phones? I think the
Sennheiser 580's are also an old design. I was looking for comparisons
on the Web, and found a site for the Headphone Corporation Web:

http://headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=13&subTopicID=72

On that page they list a bunch of phones that they sell, including
various AKGs, Sennheisers, and the Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro. From
their comments, I get the impression that they really like the
Sennheiser 580's (their price: $199), like the cheaper AKG K501s
nearly as well (their price: $149.95), and think the Beyerdynamic
DT 990 Pro good (at $179), but maybe not quite as good as the AKG or
Sennheiser. So I'm starting to think that $105 to fix my old DT 990s
is too much. I'd be very interested in opinions to the contrary, or
recommendations for new phones.

Thanks,

--David Finton

[Michael]

Just to followup with my couple of pennies ... :-)
I've owned DT990 (not pro) for several years. I wouldn't replace them
with anything for less than $400 except the Sennheiser HD600 (which I
will do at some point, but I'm not in a hurry)

I listen to quite a few phones for extended periods of time over the
years. I would be interested in what pair of AKG's was though to be
better. I haven't bumped into any yet that impressed me that way.

I listen to mostly jazz, classical, folk. A lot of acoustic instruments
and female vocals. I like what I get with the Beyer.

Michael

fin...@alumni.cs.wisc.edu (David Finton) wrote in
news:b4575...@enews3.newsguy.com:

> ccs...@aol.com (CCSman) writes:
>
>>Personally, I don't think it's worth the money.

..

> Okay. This is exactly the information I'm looking for.
> Which pair of AKG's did you buy--and how were they better than the DT
> 990?
>

..
> Thanks,
>
> --David Finton
>

[Tim Britt & Ann Weatherwax]

We've owned the 990 Pro's for several years and prefer them to the
Sennheiser HD600's.

We've also owned Sennheiser's (HD540's, HD560's and HD580's and had
reliability problems with *all* of them - Cables coming loose early, voice
coils coming unglued and not repairable, etc.) and we'll never buy
Sennheiser again. When we contacted them about these problems we were told
they were due to "abuse" and therefore not covered by warranty. So they've
lost two customers for life with us.

The original Beyer DT-990 also had some reliability problems, *but* Beyer
was "man" enough to step up and proactively address this by "ruggedizing" it
and slightly re-designing it as the DT-990Pro. And in our humble opinion,
they actually improved its sound quality. YMMV.

We've A/B's our DT-990Pro's against the Sennheiser HD-600's and actually
preferred the Beyer: The HD-600's didn't seem as dynamic and we thought
they were a little wispy sounding at the top end. The source was a Grado
headphone amp fed by the $20K Linn CD player.

Now, we haven't listened to the newer Beyer headphones so we can't offer an
opinion on them. And we've never listened to AKG's either.

No flames please - We're just simply stating our preference.

Tim & Ann

in article cjqba.49357$sf5....@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net, Michael at
mll...@enteract.com wrote on 3/11/03 1:56 PM: