Well, in the best tradition of this thread, about 5 years down the line from your post, I've stumbled upon your article re the Yamaha HP-2. I too am sitting here writing this post, listening to spotify through them. I remember distinctly as a 16 year old going into Laskys in Bristol and asking for some Koss phones, as they were the brand most guys at my school then aspired to. The sales advisor said to me "before you buy the Koss, can I ask you to spend a couple of minutes listening to these Yamahas instead?" I was a stubborn kid then, I wanted Koss but out of politeness, I agreed and it was to become one of those little life-changing moments. The sound to me was fabulous, evenly balanced, nice controlled bass, just a pleasure. The sales advisor must have been observing me because he then came up to me and took the Yamahas off my head and placed the Koss ones I'd wanted, over my ears. The sound difference was unbelievable. The Koss sounded "shelly", with a nasty peaky rasp, just like you get when you put a seashell over your ear. It was no contest, I had to have the Yamahas and am eternally grateful to that sales advisor. That was some 35 years or so ago. As with you, the thin plastic edging strips on the leather headband cracked in several places back in about 1990 but at the time I was able to contact Yamaha who supplied me with a new leather headband and strips. It took just 4 screws to replace it. Since then, the phones have had long periods of inactivity but I've fallen in love with them again recently. My taste in music has evolved from the stuff I listened to as a teenager and with digital music everywhere, these phones can still hack it. I've been to hifi shows in the last few years and have listened to the new stuff and although I can't do an A-B comparison, my Yamaha HP 2s leave me with nothing wanting. Just one other thing, they are incredibly tolerant to abuse. I know this because in my youth I was into electronic self builds and built several amplifiers and would use these phones while they were being driven directly on the amp speaker outputs. I guess the sound pressure levels did no good to my ears, I distinctly recollect the phones vibrating against my head to stuff like Pink Floyd but the phones have fared better than my ears in the long run. The leather pads are now looking a bit dull and creased, I'd love to get new pads for them, maybe I should contact Yamaha and see if by any chance they might just have some spares still for these fab phones. I'm getting into the vintage hifi, I just recently bought a Denon POA-2400 power amp. A friend of mine bought one new back in 1990 at the time I bought a NAD2600 and I always regretted not having a POA. For those who know that Denon amp, the build quality is simply astonishing and the clout it delivers through my Mission 765 hides the fact that its only 350W RMS per channel. It seems to move the house off its foundations. I know this is not hyper exotic hfi but I'm very happy with these two gems in my collection.
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