Ok. What I really want is for sTaTIx to say something so I can argue with him!

As far as insults go, I didnt mean it that way towards you. Sorry for the gaffe. If I were in the market for a home system amp you might find that I was bombarding you with PM's asking for advice. But we ALL know that in the pursuit of stereo we can sometimes fall prey to
'Audius-Nervosa' (Latin for: 'I just know theres something not right with my stereo!!') Sometimes this state can last for months and costs us thousands of dollars. I'm not presuming the forum doesnt know how to appreciate music, but I am trying to give voice on behalf of wearing a portable player around your waist and loving it. Nevermind that the headphones cost $700 new. (Oooops!)

I'm trying to counter the tendency of thinking the words of our hobby mean more than they do. And I salivate over reading glowing reviews as much as the next head-fier so I know its not easy to remember what comes first. People dont go to movie theaters to critique the carpet and chairs (or sound),
they go for the film. And if none of you have ever watched a fantastic TV show and loved it, even though the TV speaker cost approx 39 cents, then youre lying.
I'm trying to find a way of listening thats like watching a favorite TV program, all the time. I havent quite got there but thats what I'm trying to do. Its in there somewhere damn it.

Ah, now I know what you mean. I don't think I'm inflicted with this disease, though, or at least not yet. I think maybe a prerequisite to getting that disease would be getting rid of all the really obvious things you don't like about your system... ... and I haven't done that yet.

Some people like to upgrade for the sake of upgrading. It's cool, I mean, it's still a valid hobby. I know car and computer guys who do it too. It's kind of comical that they overclock their computers but only use them to post to usenet about how fast they run. (I mean, if you're running a render farm or something, it makes more sense right?) But JUST the performance tweaking is in itself a hobby.

To further that analogy, my system right now is like the computer that's NOT fast enough to run the games I want to play yet. Or rather, it plays them but the framerate is visibly choppy and the FMV has that weird moire pattern distracting you and sometimes the thing just locks up and doesn't play at all.

When I get to the point that all of the real obvious flaws are gone and I'm not distracted by it anymore, then I'll either stop/slow down... or get sucked into being in that tweaker's school of thought. I can't tell you which yet. I'm rather hoping my system will be so good that I'll just want more music or I'll maybe want speakers or a projector or some other thing that consumes my earnings. That's the real key to my motivation to be into this whole audio thing for now though: the desire to listen to music and NOT be distracted by the flaws of the hardware.

I don't mean to be so wordy, by the way - it just comes out that way.

PS: I'm actually WAY worse about movie theaters.

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Oh I love that example. Devastating and funny.
Talking about fast computers I wish I had one back when we had a T1 line and I was racing. My poor old wheel doesnt see much use these days. Ah.. but I was a champion once-- (stares off into space)

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I am curious..... if you reversed the bowl pad, how close an approximation of a flat pad is it? Distance from the ear seems about the same and the fit is not too bad but I do not have a pair of flat pads to compare with.

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It's not really a close approximation. The hole is too large.

There are other factors in play here. You will notice that the bowl pads have been treated with something to keep them stiff. You will notice the sides and along the top edge are not as soft. If you reverse the pad, you get a soft surface which may be more comfortable but alters the sound.

I am going to look for a suitable adhesive so I can apply it to cut-down bowl pads and come up with a decent replica of the original flat pad. Simply cutting them down leaves them too soft and porous and the sound suffers.

There seems to be interest in Grado pads so heres a pic of the RadioShack replacement ear pad that comes up in conversation from time to time. Since you cant feel it I want to say how lightweight and cheap this pad feels. Its a world apart from either of the Grado pads which both feel solid and hefty. I dont know why someone would really desire the RadioShack, but hey, people were also experimenting with sock wrapping and other things too, so this is pretty tame stuff.