Wharfedale Dd1 (Headphones)

[Cornelius900]

I picked this up on a fleemarket a few weeks ago: a set of Wharfedale headphones with a two way speaker system.
Never seen it before

Still in the box...




even the label is still with it.




70ties look


and heavy


Curious how it sounds, plugged it in the amplifier when I got back home. Mmmm
Loads of bass, highs are ok...
but vocals and instruments sounded thin, very thin.
If it sounded the same 40 years ago, I now can understand why it has been boxed for almost 40 years.

Well...
Opened it up and found a simple cross-over filter:
an inductor of 3mH in series with the 'woofer' (8 ohms)
a capacitor of 47uF in series with the 'tweeter' (8 ohms)
So the cross over frequency is around 400 Hz: the region that seems to be missing.

After some tinkering around with the filter I finally completely bypassed (removed) the inductor: This improved a lot.

There is still a load of bass, but vocals and instuments sound a lot better now.




Anyone else having similar experiences?

The outer shells (the white plastic) is thin and very delicate.
Both sides cracked during operations.

[countthis]

Hi there, i wonder if you can help me - i've a set of these with some problems and not being very technical I@ve not been able to get inside to have a look - how did you open them up? I@m aware you said the sides cracked, which would be a shame, but i'd still like to know how you did it! all the best

[paul401]

Hi,
a nice piece of 'retro' kit, they quite possibly did sound just as you describe, way back when. I had a similar type of headphone (closed back, single diver, but big ear cups!) way back and they had a 'boxy' thin sound. About the same time a friend got some HD400 Sennheiser headphones (open back) they were a revelation!
Anyway glad you have them working better now, a fun bit of kit to own. A little loose wadding/damping in the 'cups' might help.

Paul

PS. @countthis, the plastic may well have become somewhat brittle with age, gently warming it first may help. No guarantees though.

[Cornelius900]

The speaker assembly is (or was) glued into the shell.
The last picture shows the complete speaker assembly.

You can gently pull the cushions off. You will then see the speakers assembly.
If you look closely at the edge, you can see the glue.

I used a paperclip to make some kind of hook and pulled the speaker assembly out.