My first 'custom' arrived today, from fisher/in ears., had em in about 60 minutes so far, im VERY impressed, fit and comfort is excellent ( i made my own impressions) i had them use a pair of MEElectronics A151 as i wasnt ready to drop a lot of money into my first customs, just in case.
i use a sansa clip as my source as this is my portable rig, no amp/dac, mixture of music from soul to rap and blues funk and rock.
i use my senn hd280- pros as a reference, ive had them 5+ years and like the sound, clean, warm, detailed and un-offensive.
the A151s must be very sensitive because these get very loud at 50% volume on the sansa.
when i first listened to the A151s 'stock' i thought they were just ok, kinda bass light and mid centric/slightly harsh, nothing special at all, the volume from each iem was equal, and that was very important to me (channel matching/balance)
in the custom molds the sound has changed a lot, its become warm and smooth, and retained great detail, messing with the eq gives good options tonally.
isolation is fantastic, im sitting here and someone is watching the tv, the volume in the iems is low, i cant here the tv at all and i can hear every detail in the music.
A151s were $38 used from e bay, $90 remold, $30 removable cables, $10 shipping = $168 for some very nice sounding custom iems.
i do believe reshelling a BA will change the sonic characteristics of it from stock, and i believe i just got lucky and these happen to sound REALLY good.
if they sounded the same as the stock A151s i would have been happy enough... kinda, but they dont, they have changed a lot, words like smooth, soundstage and spatial are forming in my mind.
probably not anything world class as far as custom iems go, but the A151s in the custom molds are easily comparable in performance to the UE TF 10s ive been playing with for the last couple of weeks.
the only thing im left wondering now is,
"damn, this is with a $50 single BA, i bet with a $400+ multi BA in each ear things must get REALLY FREAKING GOOD !!!!!!"
but, if remolding changes sonic performance from stock (and i cant see how it wouldnt) remolding might make a great sounding stock iem sound worse.
i took a chance and i believe i lucked out in a big way.
if you'd like to try a custom iem, but dont want to risk / pay $400, i can recommend this $168 entry level *jobbie* very highly.
its doing a lot right, and nothing wrong.
