the Superex professional ST-PRO-B mods

[ST3RST1K4R]

Every one who has heard them loves them and is suprised at the layers in even the lowest bass and there sealed ability to block out noise and create a 3D open air sound feild that extends way outside of your head with vast space between insterments and I have listened to them for 12 and 14 hour sessions with no problems other than sweaty ears.They are a 2 way headphone with a crossover offering awsome bass a fat midrange and nice easy detailed highs that wont offend your ears.

Made in 1968 as good as they are there is very small improvements to be made.
and just renewing the ear cussions has been trial and error till I discovered the trick.

I am trying something different right now as pictured on the headphones here,There is to some point a relationship beween pad thickness and bass.If you have exsive bass and not much soundstage the pads are worn out,but a thicker pad will only give you wider soundstage to a point and to thick bass suffers.I think Superex factory pads found the sweet spot so after a little more fooling around I'll put the rebuilt factory pads back on. The factory cussions can be rebuilt useing 1 inch medum dencity foam by makeing 2 slices in the inside of the pads pulling up the foam and cutting it in half then pulling it out slowly with needle nose pliers.
Then cut a very long strip 17"long 1"X1" of foam and push,pull it into the hollow vynil pads and cut off any excess then use a little black electritions tape to cover the cuts you made and install,the repair should be invisable when assembled.

The fist 3 pictures where experimental, pic4 you can see the yellow worn down foam that was removed and the black pads refoamed from the 1" foam sheet.

I have dissasembled 4 sets of pads and rebuilt them,I can say with 100% certainty they only used foam so the gel rumors can be sqwashed.

I appreciate everything you have shared with us just as much as the other guy in this thread. I have been doing crazy experiments with these and trying to find more historical dates, times and documents to go with these as they have been lost to time. I don't just focus on the Pro-B line but their other oddballs like the ST-V, APS II, as well as the ST-S\ST-Models which modified can beat the Pro B originals In sound quality depending on the purpose.

I have found several versions of the Pro BV and VI models that have different speakers from different time periods so I question a lot of folks claiming one model is better than the other.

but I would like to ask if you or any other have done any benchmarks on these or tested them with the oscilloscope to produce any statistical results as many new production headphones have published benchmarks which I can compare which ones use the common 32ohm neodymium type speakers VS other types not commonly found.

I have found tests from way back from old magazines published featuring the QT-S model which is a rare quadrophonic model they had made which sadly bombed in comparison to the competition but never have I found the ST-S,M\PRO B ever bench tested or proven what they are really capable of...I am also looking for schematics on these but I doubt they exist or are easy to find.

...at some point, i intend to post some photos of my own mods with these that i have done that make these the most beast portable audio machine on your head for loud music

Hi, Goraman! I thanked you in the Welcome section for guiding me to these truly outstanding headphones.

I would like to add my five cents to the discussion.

If this is not the right place, I'm sorry, I'll move the post.

As for the presentation of the sound, they are unique headphones. No other headphones sound like that. The general characteristics of the sound remind me of the highly praised AKG K240 DF, used in recording studios and radio studios in Germany. But the AKG 240 DF does not have this very special spatiality of the sound and bass.

I came across Superex PRO-B headphones by browsing the old Lafayette catalog. My first thought was: "Nah, Koss Pro 4AAA did not sound so good, so it makes no sense to spend the money in vain again." But then I came across your post that was really interesting, i.e. that Superex PRO-B has a unique sound that even electrostatic headphones do not have. And I confirm this!

At home I have Lafayette F500 and Lafayette F990 headphones, another 2-way system of the era, made by Elega in Japan produced under the name Elega DR-119CH:

http://20cheaddatebase.web.fc2.com/elega/DR-119CH.html

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lafa...ons-eq.756312/

and both Superex PRO-B and Lafayette F500 come to life only on the Realistic Sta-220 and Sansui 3000A amplifiers. These two receivers are among the best that have ever been produced. They are unique when it comes to extracting high-quality bass from the speakers.

Japanese engineers, i.e. those people who produced the best amplifiers of the era, i. e. Sansui 3000A, Sony STR-6060FW and Realistic Sta-220 (Hitachi SR-1100) knew what they were doing, because everything depends on the design.

In my opinion, the Superex Pro-B headphones have been specially made for jazz and classical music and hence their unique presentation. Rock music does not sound so good on them, at least not all songs, but all jazz music sounds highly outstanding with superb clarity, sweetness and unique tone.

As for the mods, one idea to get most from Superex PRO-B's extraordinary headphones is to use Sansui 3000A, Sony STR-6060FW or Realistic STA-220 with an adapter like HiFiMAN HE-Adapter to be able to connect the headphones straight to the loudspeaker inputs. I was using HiFiMAN HE-Adapter with AKG K240DF headphones after ordering the adapter from China.

But it is also possible to make such an adapter:

http://www.dms-audio.com/power-amp-heaadphone-adapter

or to buy a cheaper one from China:

https://hifi-exquis.com/headphone-ad...t-adapter.html

The most important thing to remember is that the sound will be the sound of the amplifier to which we connect the adapter and the Superex PRO-B headphones, and hardly anything can beat Sansui 3000A, Realistic Sta-220 or Sony STR-6060FW.

Best regards,
pmusiaowski

I would confirm with pmusiaowski on directly connecting them into the inputs that it improves the sound dramatically and you don't need the best Amp in the known universe to get similar results I've used the TPA3116 with the pro-b series and with that chippy choppy amp sounds clean and ridiculously great.

in fact arguably all music sounds better on the ST-S with the TPA3116 with direct Amp connections then the Pro-B without rebuilding the crossover network to handle the extra load of 15+ whoppers