Vintage Sennheiser HD 414 behaving weird

Jazzper

New Member
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I got myself a pair of Sennheiser HD 424 some years ago. With aftermarket strange blue hard foams (see photo) which I replaced with NOS yellow ear pads. Lovely headphones to use while at work, etc.

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Fast forward to last week. Visited the local thrift store and found a pair of Sennheiser HD 414's. No ear pads and still the original Sennheiser cable with DIN speaker connectors. Costed me 2 euro ($3). Score! I was thinking: solder a 3.5mm plug, buy a pair of ear pads and presto!

At home I found out the Sennheisers have swappable cables so I could test with the cable of the HD424. Nothing... Yup I now the polarity with the two different sized pins. BTW, I could not find a L and a R on the HD414 so I carefully remembered where yellow and red went. Strange. Also after opening the headphones, nowhere a L and R. Probably the headset is perfectly symmetrical in which case swapping the cables is swapping L and R :D

I only found the letters XL2K on the headphones themself (outside is the full text, but I mean text which might help). I guess the 2K is 2000 like 2000 Ohm imp which some of the 414's should have.

Next step I was thinking my MacBook Pro was to lightweighted. Went to the shed, pulled out an early eighties old Onkyo A-15 amp (specs: https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/onkyo/a-15.shtml).
The HD424 worked like a charm (and way better than on my MacBook pro of course). Swapped cables again and tried the HD414. And than...

first nothing. Raising the volume. Nothing. More output. And boom... it started playing on one side. Dropping the volume and it still played well. And after a handful of seconds it died out again. Volume up / down and got it again. The other side never played. Well except... at volume max before it started working both sides played music very soft.

Any clues? Drivers shot?
 
Can be trouble shot with an ohm meter....there should be a thread somewhere here or youtube on how to check a driver.
 
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