While I’ve owned many, many pairs of headphones over the years, these are my favorite. While perusing the local Goodwill outlet (the ones where you rummage through dumpster bins), I stumbled upon an old pair of Nixon studio headphones that had literally melted. I took it upon myself to patch them up.

First, I sanded down to the metal on the headphones themselves, removing all of the old bits of melted ear pad. I then used my dremel to re-bore the air-holes.

The only place I could find a nice set of fully round 85mm headphone pads was a Chinese distributor on eBay. Three weeks and 2$ later, a pair of 90mm+ pads show up and I decide that it’s time to get creative.

I cut the centers out of the original pads, then cut them down the center. If you’re doing this at home: avoid the temptation to cut a mobius strip. You might need that material.

Once I had these foam fittings cut, I fastened the new ear pads over the foam fittings, and voila!

These are just about the best sounding headphones I’ve ever owned, handily beating out the multi-hundred dollar plastic phones I see on the bus daily. Total cost was about 4$.