JohnnySomersett: To my best knowledge, the DT880 had a different capsule, but I might be wrong, as there were a few variants built over the years. The 600 ohms tests ca. 570 ohms with the multimeter. Look for pictures on the net to compare with what you got. If anybody wants I post highres pics of the capsule we all like.If you get the headphones, try them at first with low frequency sine waves. If they pass this test, you can pull off the ear cushions, remove the ring aroung the perimeter carefully with a screwdriver and then you can open the cans. The capsules are sitting in a kinda nest, some are fixed with glue as well, others just held by clamps. Desolder the two wires. Get rid of the glue, make sure no crumbles fall into the back of the capsules. Pry the clamp apart, pull the capsule out. Hold the front/membrane close to a good light, look for small hair and dust/crumbs - these will make a buzz if they remain on the capsule. Now if you solder the capsule to the wires of your mic, the right one should be +, in the headphone it's the other way round. I think because a positive voltage is pushing the membrane towards you, whereas the same sound would push the membrane (if it's acting as a mic) inwards. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. So far I have gone through a number of old headphones and nearly everyone failed the sine wave test, that means dirt/dust/hair either in the magnet gap or behind the membrane. If it's ON the membrane, you can clean it. If it's not too bad, you could still use it for kickdrum and maybe get away with it, but on bass amp you will get a "kchzzzz" on clean tones, at least on the attack and loud notes, it depends.

Okay, so I did the pre-emptive surgery on my M380 just now in preparation for the DT880's to arrive as a donor. Turns out the whispy bits of copper wire 'floating' were the excruciatingly tiny connections from the voicecoil of the driver to the rest of the circuit! Typical.So, in the interests of science & common knowledge, I fully disassembled the unit (seeing as its fucked anyway).Just FYI, the 'humbucking coil' reads 2.2ohms on my cheapo multimeter, and the wire is only one layer deep around, so maybe only 50-odd turns? There's enough evidence online to support (visually and otherwise) that the early 80's, 600ohm, version of the DT880's does indeed use the same capsule. Certainly the dates line up - as do all the images on Headfi. There appears to be a crossover of usage of the drivers across the 770/880/990 range in the appropriate period - some years they all look identical!The main issue I can foresee is that the headphone drivers will have the solder tabs present, whereas the M380 capsule has them missing and the voice coil wires re-routed to the 'circuit board' superglued to the back of the magnet. There's no way in this green earth that I have the dexterity and finesse to do this! This thus causes a major issue in keeping the humbucking coil in place as it will foul the solder tabs. So, I almost certainly wont be able to re-install it. But I will try. I have a sort-of plan.When the DT880's turn up, I'll start a thread with pictures...see if we can't make some headway on this.*EDIT: I've just found this thread that confirms that the DT770, DT880 and DT990 indeed used the same capsule, but just have slight variations on treatment around the capsule to differentiate:http://www.head-fi.org/t/351227/how-to-convert-dt-880-into-dt-990-and-vice-versa-dt-770-info

FransFromBavaria wrote:JohnnySomersett: To my best knowledge, the DT880 had a different capsule, but I might be wrong, as there were a few variants built over the years. The 600 ohms tests ca. 570 ohms with the multimeter. Look for pictures on the net to compare with what you got. If anybody wants I post highres pics of the capsule we all like.If you get the headphones, try them at first with low frequency sine waves. If they pass this test, you can pull off the ear cushions, remove the ring aroung the perimeter carefully with a screwdriver and then you can open the cans. The capsules are sitting in a kinda nest, some are fixed with glue as well, others just held by clamps. Desolder the two wires. Get rid of the glue, make sure no crumbles fall into the back of the capsules. Pry the clamp apart, pull the capsule out. Hold the front/membrane close to a good light, look for small hair and dust/crumbs - these will make a buzz if they remain on the capsule. Now if you solder the capsule to the wires of your mic, the right one should be +, in the headphone it's the other way round. I think because a positive voltage is pushing the membrane towards you, whereas the same sound would push the membrane (if it's acting as a mic) inwards. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. So far I have gone through a number of old headphones and nearly everyone failed the sine wave test, that means dirt/dust/hair either in the magnet gap or behind the membrane. If it's ON the membrane, you can clean it. If it's not too bad, you could still use it for kickdrum and maybe get away with it, but on bass amp you will get a "kchzzzz" on clean tones, at least on the attack and loud notes, it depends.Thanks for the info.I'm hopeful on the capsule as the DT880 looks like this:...which looks pretty much identical

Results here:viewtopic.php?f=5&t=66746

What I've been upt to in the last few months - going through used headphones/capsules to see which one have the best chance to live on in a M380. The failure rate, for what I found, is higher than 50% for capsules to be dead and for the rest, less than half pass the low sinewave test to check if there is dirt/hair on the membrane or worse, in the magnet gap - which makes them buzz or resonate on bass and low mids. I came across three different capsules, the white one most have already seen, the one with a black gauze on the back to prevent dirt coming in from the back and a third with a slightly darker tint of white. If somebody else wants to poke around I could offer a few buzzing capsules and one that was passing the sine wave test until it went open circuit after unsoldering, I guess it may be the small wires on their way to the terminal. You can have them for postage. (I'm on holidays for most of august) Then a crazy idea of mine - through an aquaintance at the company I got the idea to have Beyer make a limited run of capsules, take a variant that's close, change them and have them made to order. So far it's not into details and I even have no clue if they really would do it and what it would cost per piece. Are there people out there who could use such a capsule (without the humbucking coil, which wouldn't be too complicated to add) if it sounded/behaved the same?

They basically just need to reissue this mic.They probably never will.

I scored one you guys. M380TG. Here are it's insides.

Question for the users out there before I go destroying this thing accidentally. I've heard Steve and others say they use this inside a kick drum. How long term is the life of an M380 being used for this application? I feel like this might be a risky move. Is the inside of the drum a safer place than near the hole? How would this compare to being used in front of a bass cabinet?I don't want to kill my nice mic.

thesetacos wrote:Question for the users out there before I go destroying this thing accidentally. I've heard Steve and others say they use this inside a kick drum. How long term is the life of an M380 being used for this application? I feel like this might be a risky move. Is the inside of the drum a safer place than near the hole? How would this compare to being used in front of a bass cabinet?I don't want to kill my nice mic.They can withstand massive SPL. But, they do seem to just die randomly...for no real reason.

Yeah that's been my experience as well. Big puffs of air, super loud sound, no problem. Then one day out of the blue just craps out.