Tungsten V2

Greetings,

As you are all aware we have been running behind on orders for a long time now.  While we are very hesitant to attempt scaling our business or outsourcing production, we have been working on a Tungsten V2 behind the scenes to speed up production and make some modest improvements to the design.  I believe these changes will help us a lot with catching up on orders as well as provide customers with an all-around better product.  However, while I would encourage and appreciate everyone switching to the new design (at no extra cost), we will still offer the existing V1 design for outstanding orders for anyone who wants exactly what they originally ordered.  The downside to the Tungsten V2 changes is that they have increased our costs, on top of cost increases we have eaten over the last year or so.  Therefore, we are going to offer one last drop (August) at the original Tungsten price.  Moving forward, we will offer Tungsten V2 at a higher price of $2199 for double sided and $1699 for single sided.  Outstanding orders will not have to pay any extra to switch to Tungsten V2. Note: the appearance/design is very similar to the original, but we don’t have professional photos to share yet.   

Here is a break down of the chassis changes and driver changes:

Chassis:
1. New jack design built onto a custom PCB - no more soldering required and drivers could be user replaceable. 
2. New custom finish (first in the country for 3d printed parts according to our supplier).  This is a new type of powder coating that provides a more uniform finish while still having scratch resistance as good or better than cerakote in our testing. This change will improve consistency, fit, and finish of the chassis.
3. New cup design to accommodate the new jack PCB system as well as slim down the cup.  Cups can now be removed from yokes if needed by customer.  Larger cable connectors now fit much better (DHC / Norne and Furutech for example). 
4. New headband design to improve the consistency / distribution of clamp force and reduce weight.  Changing cerakote color from Armor black to Graphite black to better match chassis finish. 
5. Tweaked yokes and rod blocks (second set screw removed) as tolerances have been improved.  

Drivers: 
The goal with the drivers was to decrease the reject rate on the gold traces, which saves time and money, as well as improve consistency.  This was made possible by some new gold (still 24K) manufactured such that it has a lower resistance at the same thickness.  The upside is that the new gold allowed us to increase efficiency without reducing sound quality.  The gold is a little thicker than before, but the traces are now narrower and a new adhesive process has allowed for less adhesive, which means the moving mass should now be less.  Because of the reduced mass and the traces being centered over the strongest area of the magnetic field, efficiency has now increased by 20-30% at the same impedance.  I believe there is a subtle sound quality improvement, but will be getting feedback from reviewers soon and will let them speak to the difference.  While my measurements show smoother treble (mostly a significant reduction in the small peaks seen around 8khz and 12khz) we have not had them measured by a 5128 or GRAS system yet, so I will withhold measurements for now.  We hope to get them validated soon. 

We will be sending a follow up email to the orders coming up soon (September through November orders), but if you know for sure which version you prefer, feel free to respond now. We will also be shipping out demo units to reviewers, so more impressions and measurements will be out soon.  The Tungsten V2 page will be live in a few weeks when have professional photos taken.

In the future we will also offer driver upgrades for folks who have V1 units, although we will not be starting that for a few months.

Thank you,

Ryan

It's been a long time coming....

They are now over 3 years in the making, but we are finally ready to start talking about our new headphones, called “Tungsten”. We plan to open a limited number of pre-order slots soon to be fulfilled before the end of July, and will hopefully be able to have open orders in August. We will create a page with a lot more information on the headphones soon. However, I would like to give some more background information here first.

Before I go into a brief history lesson, I want to give a shout out to 4 people, without whom this would not have been possible….

My wife Katie, for her support and endless patience. She’s been critical for keeping the business running over the last several years and is really the un-sung hero of the business.

My friend Matt, who has been working with me on the drivers for the last 3 years. He has invested a huge amount of time and effort into this project even when the end was nowhere in sight. Without him this project would have taken even longer - if it would even have finished at all.

Skedra, from Viking Weave cables. He has been incredibly supportive ever since hearing an earlier prototype at Can Jam Socal almost a year ago. He has allowed me to integrate the cables into the cups in a way that I wasn’t sure would be possible, and will allow us to provide one of the best (if not the best) stock cables of any headphone on the market today.

Zach, from ZMF. He inspired me to start modifying headphones over 6 years ago, and has graciously allowed me to offer his pads with my headphones from the day I started through today. He and Bevin are some of the best in the business and I really appreciate their support!

For those interested, I would like to provide a brief timeline of this project. After the T60 Argons were released I knew I needed to start working on my own fully custom headphones, but I didn’t realize how big of an undertaking that was. This project has undergone a lot of changes over the years that has ended with what I believe are the best headphones possible that we can now produce.

late 2019: I began experimenting with chassis and drivers from China

early 2020: I met Matt, was impressed his first drivers and we started working together on a new design from the ground up.

middle of 2020: The first design (inspired by vintage planars but with modern materials) was completed, but did not provide the subjective performance we wanted to achieve. We began investigating what contributes to subjective technical performance and began another ground-up design.

Late 2020 / early 2021: the first of the 2nd major driver designs was completed, and while it provided higher subjective performance, it had several objective issues.

Middle / late 2021: the 3rd major revision was completed with a variety of diaphragm materials. It was a significant improvement but still had issues.

Early 2022: The 4th major revision was completed that solved most of the issues we were experiencing, but when we tried to scale up and start to actually build them we realized it would not be viable to produce them at a reasonable price or time frame.

September 2022: After months of experimenting Matt was able to figure out a new method to create a viable design that was an evolution of what had come before. This was our 5th major driver revision and was the first model shown publicly - at Can Jam SoCal 2022. However after hearing all the flagships at the show I realized we were no where close and not where we wanted to be….

November 2022: Another redesign brought significant improvements with a larger driver, thinner diaphragm, and a more optimized trace design. This 6th design was taken to Capital Audio Fest and the Boston Head-fi meet in January of 2023.

February 2023: We figured out a way to use much thinner metal traces - this time of gold and silver instead of aluminum. Versions of both were taken to the Philadelphia head-fi meet and Can Jam NYC 2023. Unfortunately shortly after Can Jam we discovered a design flaw that required a redesign of many parts of the drivers and headphone chassis.

April 2023: The redesign to fix the design flaw allowed us to make some more improvements across the board to get more performance out of the drivers. However, these changes had also caused issues in the treble that we weren’t able to resolve with the current design. Leading to the final major redesign.

June 2023: By integrating the best design elements of v6 and v8, and changing the diaphragm material we were able to fix the treble issues and provide a new level of performance. I am now very happy with both the subjective and objective performance of these drivers and feel the represent the best we can do. That is, at least until we can make them with double sided magnets. We will be offering both single and double sided versions tentatively with more details to come.

I will be working on a product page with more details soon, but wanted to share some background with everyone first. Feel free to email us if you have questions, but more info will be coming soon. Thank you!

Spring Update

Greetings,

We are proud to announce new custom pads we have made in partnership with Dekoni Audio! We highly recommend them with T60RP Argons. The pads increase the sound stage and bass extension significantly, while decreasing mid-bass a little bit. For anyone interested in using them with other headphones, they are 110mm in diameter and have a large round ear opening of 70mm. They are made of memory foam and a soft micro-suede covering. These pads increase the sound stage and bass extension significantly, while decreasing mid-bass a little bit. We will be sending out an email with more info to customers with pending T60RP orders in case they would like to switch at no extra cost.

Also, we have taken some measures to increase the speed of processing orders and hope to be on schedule within the next week or so.

Finally, we will soon be updating our company logo and may also do a site redesign in the near future. We hope you like the new look!

Regards,

Ryan