The Absolute Sound
Vol.19. No.12

A Musician Compares Headphones to the Real Thing
by Dan Schwartz
So Frank Doris calls me and sez, "I got these hundred dollar headphones from John Grado and they sound awfully good!" So I say to Frank; "Can I hear 'em?" So the next thing I know, I don't get the hundred dollar ones, the SR80s, I gets the sixty-nine dollar ones, the SR 60's! And I realize I'm in trouble because I like them better than the six-hundred dollar HP-1's. And if I'm gonna say that in print I better be right. They're more comfortable, less of a vise-grip on the scull, and their top-to-bottom extension is better than my personal HP-1s, this determined using a demo CD-R that John Grado included with the new set. The top end is probably cruder, but who can tell since the HP-1s have none and for $69 it's still ridiculously good.

So I beat my breast and wail to the heavens, and finally I call John, the Next Generation, and I tell him of my conclusions. Like it would be to any reasonable manufacturer, hearing that his bottom-of-the-line is better than his top-of-the-line is disturbing to him. Instead of calling me a subjectibist wacko, he offers to update my cans to current spec, ie., the new wire. I accept. Overnight air to Brooklyn (with a check in the box to pay for the SR60's, just in case). Overnight air back. I listen. I still think the cheapos kill the HP-1's. I hear no improvement. He says this cannot be. Turns out he installed new wire up to the phase switches. But from the switch to the diaphragm it's still the old wire. So it can be. Overnight air to Brooklyn. Overnight back, Aha!

Yes, now something happened. I hate admitting it was just a wire that made the difference, but I like my HP-1's again. I understand why Gary Galo had no complaints about the top end of the HP-2's. My bass on Sheryl Crow's record sounds like my bass again. And on "No One Said It Would Be Easy", right after my awkward little unamplified miked-electric guitar break the sound you hear finally sounds like what it is; Sheryl lighting a match at the vocal mike during an instrumental break.

John must have made an adjustment to the headband too, because the HP-1's don't hurt anymore. The SR60's are still more comfortable. But it's a pleasure having a reference I can enjoy and rely on again. While the HP-1s were in transit I did a mix with the SR60s and the 580s and, probably due to inexperience with them, I got terrible mixes. You will still hear more top with the SR60's than the HP-1s, but I'm hard put to determine which is correct. Is more recording hiss accurate or an exaggeration? Using my own tapes, my sense is that neither is exactly right. The SR60s elevate the top slightly, but in a remarkably uncrude way. The "tizzy" quality I usually hear with bright headphones is absent. Just alot of top. For $69, they're stupid good. If you don't feel like jumping into this way of listening with a big expenditure, buy these with no doubts and plug'em into your headphone output.