How I Made My Headphones More Comfortable

I bought a new pair of headphone pads today!

Despite my love for good audio, the most I’ve ever spent on it has been about $80. It was on a pair of AKG-K371BT headphones. I love them! They’re the best headphones I’ve ever had. But I’ve never been able to wear them for more than a couple hours. When I do, my ear gets pressed against the inside of the headphones and it begins to hurt like hell. This happens because the pads on the earphones are too small, and my big ears hit the hard insides where the speaker plates are.

Once I got to college, it got so bad that I stopped wearing my headphones entirely. I had them sitting in a bag in my cupboard just because they made my ears hurt. Then, one day, I looked up how to fix it. “Buy new pads,” the internet said. “They’ll be thicker - your ears won’t hit the insides anymore.” So I did! I ordered some new pads off the internet for $25. They’re angled pads made by Brainwavz, and they’re made out of pleather. They showed up in a neat little packet from Amazon, and I set them aside. “Replacing the pads seems finicky - I’ll do it when I have the time!”

Then I got sick and was in bed for a week.

But now I’m better! And with all my homework complete, I decided to replace them. It was a nasty process:

• First I had to take off the old pads
  • I felt a hard plate while taking them off, and I thought it was the plastic plate that covered the headphone speakers. I didn’t want to break that, so I was super nervous about taking it off. Turns out it wasn’t that plate! AKG K371 pads just have a hard plate inside of them.
  • I was also super careful while pulling them off because I didn’t want to tear them. They might not fit me perfectly, but they’re good pads. Apparently some people pry them out with a guitar pick, but I didn’t need to.
• Then I had to put on the new pads
  • The new pads were difficult to put on. They weren’t stretchy, and they didn’t have a hard plate like the old pads, so the rubber lip that inserts into the headphones didn’t stick out enough for me to insert it into its slot. I had to stretch a third of its length into position, then carefully use the existing length as leverage to insert more and more of the rubber lip into the headphones.
  • These headphones have a small paper circle on top of the plastic plate that acts as a damper. After I took off the original pads, my left damper fell off. So I put the right pad on first, then I tried to put the damper back into place and put the left pad on. But the damper wasn’t stuck in place, and without any kind of glue, it wasn’t going to stay on the headphones unless I balanced it flat. I couldn’t do it alone, so I asked my roommate to hold the headphones in place for me. She rested one end of them on a table and held up the other end while I set the damper back into position and tried to put on the left pad. It took a few minutes and a bit of effort, but we did it! There was a little piece of the lip that bent oddly away from its slot and refused to go in. I had to slowly finagle and caress it into its place.

But now I have a new set of pads on my headphones! Since they’re angled pads, the thick end goes behind my ears and keeps them from touching the plastic plate on the headphones! It’s the most comfortable I’ve ever been in them! I love wearing them now, and I feel like I can actually turn up the volume and listen for a bit and have fun without hurting myself after too long! Thank goodness for this.