[TomIvanis]

Hello everyone, I have just registered to this forum to see if anyone has an idea about resolving my problem.

 Anyways, I have the ATH-m50 for more than two years now and unfortunately their left driver started to rattle, as they were used for 5-6 hours daily. Few weeks ago I ordered the replacement driver from the distributor, happy and enthusiastic I resoldered my new driver and every wire connecting to it as neatly as possible, just to be unpleasantly surprised that the replaced driver is a bit quieter than the old one. As a result, the stereo image suffered severely, so that even a mono signal delivers quite of a stereo pan to the right.
 
I would be very pleased if someone could help me resolve this, give any sort of idea or maybe even share the pain with their own experience. 

Thanks in advance,
Tom.

 

[BotByte]

Some people say you need to burn them in.
 
I believe in burn in, so let them go for 40 hours until you pass judgement again
 
Also, I highly doubt you perfectly soldered everything together correctly, which would lead to conductivity problems.
 
Why didn't you just replace them? 
 
I know it's sad to get rid of them, but if my beloved Grados took a dive in the drivers, they would be trash and moved out for a new pair.

 

[TomIvanis]

Well, after the "burn-in", the image got centered a bit, but not significantly. Over the course of this year, I'm sure to replace them with probably HD25-1 II, but as you said, it's hard to "say goodbye" to your old pair of cans...