At some point I wanted to get back into music production. I wanted to write music, record vocals at home and use headphones to monitor the sound during video editing. I started to look for new headphones, but I didn’t have enough money to buy them. Looking back I found my old studio headphones, Sennheiser HD200. They were designed in the 2000s, I bought them 15 years ago when I was 16 and had my own recording home studio. So I decided to use them, because they still have great sound quality, but more on that later.
After a few years of using this pair of headphones, there was a problem with the ear pads. As you can see in the video, there is a material missing from the speaker, so I had to replace it.
New ear pads for old Sennheisers
When I was thinking of new ear pads, I first thought about buying them. I started to searching online, but this is an old Sennheiser HD200 model and they are no longer in production.
I even wrote a message to Sennheiser customer service with this question and they responded, but there was no quick solution. So I decided to take matters into my own hands, and women’s socks seemed like a good material to restore old pads myself.
Why use women’s socks?
Sometimes even in professional studios, sound engineers use women’s stockings as a pop-filter. Even Michael Jackson recorded his vocals using something similar to stockings to replace the pop filter in front of the microphone.
I know, there is a big difference between a microphone pop filter and headphone ear pads, but I just needed something to put over the headphone speakers to keep my ears from touching them.
Impact on Frequencies & Sound Quality
I know that using women’s socks for the ear pads can change the frequency response, but I think it doesn’t metter much unless you use the headphones for mixing and mastering.
When the job was done, I compared my old Sennheiser HD200 with other studio monitoring headphones, and I could tell that even 15 years later they are still great for tracking and recording vocals, for video production. So it’s amazing to me that Sennheiser developed something 20 years ago and it still works great!
Final thoughts
So this little experiment helped me save some money on a new pair of headphones. I still want to buy new headphones for mixing and mastering, maybe open backs. However, I’m glad I gave my old Sennheisers a second life. It warms my heart.
Thanks for listening to my story. Take care of your gear and subscribe to my YouTube channel. I will be posting more videos about the equipment I use for my home studio studio. Bye.
