The JVC HA-S500.. Appreciation, fan thread. - Page 163

Thanks god i had no bias against jvc products, had no idea you guys in the states thought about jvc being cheap and mediocre products. Down here jvc is like a sony, big company that makes all kind of good stuff for great prices.

But i was under the impression that something was wrong with these jvc's around here and so much love from other brands. Slap a sony,sennheiser or some other famous logos on these phones and they would be flying of the shelf with hundreds ofmreviews on youtube, because what i am hearing from my s500,fxd70 and 80 have no relation to something cheapo or being a "drug store phone". I am very happy i subscrided to these forum otherwise i would be raving about how good my "hi-fi" sennheiser 280pro sounds, NOT!

Anyway, maybe the good thing is that whe are buying very good stuff for cheap, slap one of those popular logos on these s500 and the theynwould be selling them for 150bucks or even more, so yes you all. Jvc is all about cheap and bad stuff and prices will be down, just let us enjoy all these mediocre stuff you all keep buying "high end" products


Edited by rickdohc - 10/20/12 at 2:37pm

My last JVC products before the S500's were the HAS-150 "Flats" which are a great value and sound pretty decent....and the HA-S600's, which again, good value and sound decent (I do use a bit of EQ with them). So I was surprised at first that there was an S500 that might be better than the S600, but Dsnuts was right before about the S600 and the AT WS55, so I trusted him to be right about the S500's. Little did I know that once I got the S500, I'd barely use anything else! 

I am a little bit confused after reading all the posts in this thread. Saw a lot of discussions about the the ATH leathers/pleathers and Sennheiser HD25 pads. Can someone please give some more information about the difference between them and recommend which one of them would be a better choice?

 

 

Thank You

 

Wow, I had no idea how big and innovative JVC is.  $660 BILLION in revenue in 2008.  Developed the VHS (so they kicked Sony's butt in that war).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JVC

The Menu.
Just choose what you want and this S500 will just deliver.

To those who did driver transplants, did these drivers sound good in anything?  My roommates pair was turned into parts by the residing dog. Headband is screwed, and they need a rewiring. but the drivers and cups are intact for the most part.

 

Edit: front of cups are not ok, rear of cups are bitten, but are mostly intact.

Edited by kevo108 - 10/20/12 at 5:39pm

I know Norm did a transplant into the S600s. I'm thinking about doing that myself.

Thanks for the huge thread, time to pick up a new toy!

 I like the theory there, having these drivers in a circumaural headphone, but I think some of the joy would be lessened by the S600's kinda creaky build. Move your head around much while wearing them and you'll hear what I mean. It's a shame because they're fairly comfortable, assuming your ears fit into the cups.

Well that's a tough question :) That depends on the music genre I listen to and I listen to a lot of genres from acoustic and folk to electronic and rock. I can tell you that between the PortaPro and the PX-100 I prefer the sound of PX-100 

 

Thank You

Regarding what Japanese in general, not only JVC, export and keep to their shores, needs clear clarification. I was shocked in mid 70s to find it the hard way - Italian Stereoplay did issue then annually a special issue called Stereobest. The brutal truth - catalogues for Japan and for rest of the world

do overlap - for a couple of models in the entire line. What is top of the line for the rest of the world, is bottom for Japan. It was quite sobering to find top Mark Levinsons and Audio Researches of the day to be only mid priced components in Japan - check Uesugi etc etc - the price simply had at least one zero in yen too much, rendering the  first digit being 1 or 9 irrelevant. To further add to the insult, service manuals for Sansui from said period have labeled components like capacitor C123* - that * means models for Japan only. No closer toleranced components or bypass capacitors and other goodies for export ! Verified by myself by opening a few boxes - empty places on circuit boards.

 

JVC repeated this scenario by bringing only HA-S400 to US and keeping HA-S500 to Japan only - times have obviously not changed.

Wow Analogsurvivor, that is VERY informative and makes total sense why they haven't (and prolly wont) release the has500 in the states. Thanks for that background info.

So I'm  looking at cheap options to transplant these drivers in and I was wondering, does anyone have any idea/impressions on which cup/chamber these drivers would sound better in, between the HARX500 and the HARX300? These cups seen to have similar depth to the S500's and are designed around 40mm drivers.

To do a transplant with another JVC headphone the first one you may want to check out is the HA-RX500 which can be purchased for about $20 USD or possibly the HA-S700 which can be purchased for abut $30 USD. The build quality I did not care for on the HA-S600, I thought it was a little bit flimsy. Happy Listening.