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So I did a re-cabling of my Superlux HD681, it took some time assembling the cable, braiding it and heatshrink it, but the end result is quite good if I have to judge

Re-cabled HD681

So you can see the result in the picture, the cable has changed the sound of the headphone quite a lot. The bass is tighter and I think the highs got a bit harsher, though I don’t her much or any difference in the mids.

The cable is a Double Helix Nucleotide OCC 24awg cable, with one of their Jack 1/4″ connectors, the cabling internally has also been changed, because the stock cable was very fragile and I kinda broke it

The story begins with me reading a thread on Hifi4all.dk about Superlux HD660 and HD681. I had never heard of the brand before. Some of the users had discovered these headphones and started to praise them a lot, mostly because of the nice sound quality you get contra the price of the headphone. This thread links to another thead on rock grotto, which is about modding the Superlux HD681, which describes how good they play after some minor modifications. So this is where it caught me, why not buy these myself? They are after all only ~$30! After some shopping on Thomann I ended up buying a pair of these headphones and some AKG K240 velour pads, because the threads say the standard pads are not so comfortable and can get very sweaty.

Today I finally got them, first impressions of these headphones were that they feel very flimsy, the build quality is not very good compared to my previous Sennheiser HD555 or my current Beyerdynamic DT880. That did not scare me away. I plugged the headphones into my amp, and started to listen to them. First thing I noticed was the awesome bass, they are like having a subwoofer on your head! But the mids and highs are very good as well, but as many mentioned the highs can be a bit metallic, which is why I am in the process of breaking these headphones in. Pink noise for some hours or 10 to start with, and then some more until I hit about 100 hours or so. But I have to listen to them from time to time to see how the sound develops.

I am also planning on changing the cable on these headphones, because the factory cable is very very thin and flimsy. I might also try some of the other mods people have made on their headphones on Rock Grotto, such as the aluminium rings to replace the red ones, maybe also the filter to filter away those nasty metallic highs. But I am really looking forward to listening more to these headphones, probably the best buy I have done in a long time. Cheap ass headphones with great sound, what else do you want?

Also here is a quick picture for the interested.

A picture of the Superlux HD681's headphones with AKG k240 velour pads