I have zero motives to defend JHA. I honestly don't care about them, but I just wanted you guys to know something I've experienced.
The comparison pics of the two different Angie's is obviously bad/shocking and terrible, but do keep in mind that if you want uniformity (something that looks exaclty the same) there is nothing that can beat mass produced. You can get $5 earbuds stamped out in some foreign factory and 99.99999% of them will look exactly the same. When you get into true "hand build luxury items" you notice a lot of flaws and uneveness. I think it's just the nature of the beast/the human factor that's missing in almost 99% of products out there since everything we own in stamped out in a factory.
I used to be into collecting luxury watches, like over $10,000+ watches and many of the hand built boutique watches had similar "hand built" flaws that a $10 Mickey Mouse watch didn't. An example of this would be dust inside the sealed face of the watch or faceplates of the watch having certain flaws or looking different. They were built by some of the best swiss handmade pretigious companies in the world. Same goes for watch straps. You can buy a cheap plastic strap and it'll virtually be identical to it's brothers, but if you buy a $900 hand sown watch strap made from the best leathers and threads in the world, crafted by legendary craftsman in France every piece will look different and often the stitching will be uneven or even not to mention the thickness and cut of the strap will sometimes look odd/wrong. It just looks like some human built it and not a machine.
Honestly to avoid this problem JHA should just get their universal IEM shells stamped out a factory and be done with it. Cheaper for them and no complaints
I personally like these little quarks and uneveness because I know at the high end luxury hand made products are all like this. I used to own $30,000+ watches that were less accurate than a $10 Mickey Mouse quartz watch, not to mention how it looks different from it's brothers because of the human factor. Funny but true is that Rolex (which is considered mid-tiered/mid-market) is less accurate than almost all quartz watches you find by a huge margin. And by quartz I mean just cheap ass digital clocks you see everywhere, on walls and in cars and on the wrists of little kids. A Rolex will be off many more seconds and or minutes and week or month than all wall clocks, not to mention the regular servicing you need instead of just replacing the battery.
I have zero motives to defend JHA. I honestly don't care about them (give a rats ass about them), and I do think the two Angies are bordering on how far you can take the concept of handbuilt flaws, but I just wanted you guys to know something I've experienced. JHA seems fairly responsive to consumer requests for exchanges. Just get them swtiched out, but even your next pair won't be 100% identical. I know my Laylas are certainly not.
