[Azin]

Hi, 
 
I have a pair of Alessandro MS-1s that I bought a couple months back. 
They were mainly meant for guitar playing at night, but I also use them for listening to music which they do a very good job at. 

When I do use them for guitar playing though, they make the sound seem very compressed and distorted.
There is barely any depth in the sound, and even using the clean channel on my amp gives them a very crunchy sound. That can be a cool effect, but definitely not when it's not wanted!

It bothers me to the point where I would rather just play the guitar without an amp or with the amp on a very low volume. 

I have tried using my Adrenalinn II both for amp modeling and just as an alternative to a clean channel, but there's no real difference in the sound. 

The headphones should be burned in. I let them sit for about a day, playing a high quality recording of a symphony with the volume slightly higher than usual, but frankly, I don't really believe doing that will make any difference that's noticeable to the point where it would affect this. 

Do you have any idea what's going on? Are the Grados/Alessandros just that overrated, or is there anything I can do?

Best regards, 
Magnus

 

[Sleep Mode zZ]

If the headphones do a good job with normal music listening, they should be ok.
 
The problem probably is in the guitar amp's headphone output or it's sound. Do you use the adrenalinn directly or through an amp? I think that headphone outputs in guitar amps are often quite bad (there is no speaker/cabinet modelling). Do you have any other headphones to test with?

 

[Azin]

No and that's a problem.

I did use the Adrenalinn both with and without the amp with the same bad result though. Actually, it's meant to be used that way; straight to a speaker system without an amp.

I might be able to try out a pair of headphones with the same amp where I bought mine. 

 

[Azin]

So I took them to the shop where I bought my amp and asked the guy to see if he could tell what was wrong. 
He essentially said that nothing was wrong with them, they just have a very rough sound.
 
I guess that just means that I wasted $170 on something the earphones I got with my phone could do just exactly as well.
You will probably assume I'm exaggerating, but I mean that very literally. 

 

[Azin]

Does anybody else have any ideas?

 

[GREQ]

That's an amp problem - All Grados/Allesandros can go VERY loud without any distortion (they'll distort at volumes you won't want to put your ear beside), so if you're getting distortion on your clean channel on the amp, that's the amp's headphone-out doing it, not the headphones.
 
I'm going to guess that the headphone-out on the amp is naturally very loud and better suited to high impedance headphones.... which doesn't fully explain why you're getting a 'better' sound from phone-earbuds, as they're generally even lower ohmage....confusing. 

 

[Sleep Mode zZ]

Quote:

Does anybody else have any ideas?

1. Anyway to tweak the sounds to be less harsh?
2. Get other headphones (maybe try the Koss PortaPros).
3. Change the Adrenalinn to something else.
4. Don't use headphones for guitar practice.