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Comment by fareesh | Hacker News Reader

One of the problems with headphones is that the cups tend to deteriorate over time - maybe sweat or the oil from the skin or something reacts with it and it starts to peel. After a few years, the cups are no longer available for that model and so you end up having to buy a new one.

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Have you looked at 3rd party replacement pads? I've never seen a pair of headphones with removable pads that I couldn't get an aftermarket replacement for-- usually better quality than the factory ones. Big round ones, smaller ovular ones, memory foam, leather velour or whatever finishes... always managed to get something that fit. Just measured and looked for something close. They mostly seem to attach the same way.

Most recently, for a discontinued Audio Technica set that did not match any of the standard AT pads, I got replacements from Wicked Cushions.

+1 to the Wicked Cushions suggestion. The pads on my Bose 700s split, and the Wicked Cushion replacements were thicker and had better isolation than the OEM pads. They seem to have held up really well over the last 12 months as well.

The irony is that you’ll have better luck finding quality 3rd party replacements for popular, widely sold “non-repairable” models (Sony, Bose, etc) than boutique “repairable” cans.

I haven't had that issue, but if you know that you do, in this case you can buy the cups separately. After trying it out for a few weeks or months to make sure it's a keeper, just order another pair of cups?

I got the impression that they've had phone parts in stock for a very long time, but of course that's relative to the average phone age and I don't know how many years you'd be expecting. In this case, though, if you already know what you'll need ahead of time... that's a cheap thing to just keep in a drawer. Can't go out of stock if you already have them and thereby double the other parts' longevity.

Curious: do they degrade over time in drawer?

The person speculated that it might be from skin oils, which would make sense to me more than natural degradation across the timespan of a few years of doing literally nothing to them. But yeah, I don't actually know.

That's absolutely been my issue with a number of headphones, so I'm definitely interested in these.

I originally thought this was about in-ear buds (because of the somewhat misleading name), for which they'd have been just a few months too late for me (I bought some Sony MX4s earlier this year), but full over-ear headphones? I might be interested in that.

I think there replacement pads for a bunch of them (especially more expensive models)

Dekoni Audio do great and relatively inexpensive replacements for ear cushion pads. I’ve bought pads for my Sony ANC phones and they are at least as good as the factory ones.

FWIW Bose is still selling replacement cups for QC2, which were first sold 20 years ago, and have been discontinued for 14 years.

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