Grados are not really designed for outdoor wear. They could be re-designed for such, but they'd need to build in strain reliefs, jacket the cables, shorten the cable a bit, and find some way to keep water out of the transducers without losing the "open" quality that make Grados sound better than...

My Martin built Turbulent X driver 'phones are in the shop for re-wire, and I hope to have them back later this week. I sent them off to Jason Ambrose for a full re-wire and am getting a strain relief added in.    The Sovtek Military Spec "audio" tubes are incredibly smooth, stable, noiseless...

The cord frayed at the splitter and I returned them to Koss after registering them on the warranty page. Enclosed a check for $9 US and a brand new pair showed up in the mail in a plain box and a plastic bag about ten days later. These are my "outdoor" headphones--the Martins don't leave the...

I have spent more than a thousand hours with the same pair of Soviet 6BE6 tubes in my LDIII, , fed by a Turtle Beach DSS2, a Carver TX11a tuner or an IAudio 10. Headphones are my Martin Cocobolo shell Turbulent X cans. The electricity is via a dedicated 15 amp circuit with a Tripplite hospital...

As an amateur radio operator, I have more than a few receivers and most of them can be overloaded by switching power supplies and wireless routers, which generally scream all the way from 10 KHz to 30+ MHz. Computers are a rich source of harmonics, odd and wandering digital noises. In cracking...

The notes say he used Turbulent X drivers. I have never heard any of the other transducers in the Turbulent line, so I have no way to compare them. Given how many differences there are between the Alessandro MS1 that are my previous cans and the Martin headphones, it is impossible for me to...

Steve Guttenberg at CNET says the Mad Dogs are excellent with two different tube headphone amplifiers he has tested, so I suspect the LDIII would excel with these cans as well.

Pictures will be posted as soon as they can be shot and gotten back from developing and scanning. I shoot 120 size film (6x6 cm) with my Rolleicords and 4x5 inch sheet film in a Press Camera.

My first purchase was a Koss Portapro for travelling. Grados are not suitable for the Streets of Seattle. Much better build quality and durability than the Skullcandy phones that fell apart after ten months of gentle usage.

The Martin cans arrived late this week! Phenomenal quality construction. The red and black cocobolo chambers are magnificent, as are the bare aluminum mounts and the leather headband. Turbulent X drivers inside. The wiring is basic- black 22 AWG silver plated copper with a Paiiliccs 3.5mm plug...

6BE6 Status Report--   After a few hundred hours of burn-in, my Soviet 6BE6 tubes are running at an average temperature of 135F (after two hours of run time) with an ambient air temperature of 62F. LDIII Case near the front tubes is ~88F. The rear tubes run much hotter-near 280F at top.  ...

archive.org is an excellent starting point for public domain books on electronics, tubes and tube circuitry. Any number of "bundlers" have put together outstanding DVD collections of public domain and long out of print electronics books, and they are on eBay and elsewhere. If you want a detailed...

Here is the official GE spec sheet for the 6BE6 as a pentagrid converter--   www.wdv.com/Electronics/Radios/Hammarlund/pdf/6BE6.pdf   Here is one article on how amateur radio operators and tube enthusiasts can use it--   k3uh.com/test/SW_Receiver.htm   Keep the electrons flowing...

I have finished ~40 hours with mil-spec Soviet 6BE6 tubes. Most of my listening has been to 1950's jazz and vocals over FM using a Carver TX11a tuner.   This tube seems to really find its voice with this source material. Sibilance is not unpleasant,  high hat brushwork is crisp and I can...

My introduction to Grado-land was the SR80. These were broken after a few years, and I moved on to an MS1 by Alessandro run through a Little Dot MK III.  Badly mixed or sourced music sounds bad, everything else sounds quite nice. I spent 25 years away from audiophile headphones, and must say...

My resolve to avoid experimentation didn't hold and I ordered a ten pack of Soviet Cold War era mil-spec 6BE6 heptodes. Once sorted into matched pairs I'll install a set and compare these to the 6J1P-EV tubes currently gracing my LD III.

I just purchased a Carver tuner-TX11a model. Bought mainly for the high fidelity AM section, it functions better on FM or AM than my Redsun RP2100. Part of the magic seems to be in the AM de-emphasis setting. On FM, the tuner renders many stations audible that were lost in multipath distortion...

Maybe my imagination or hearing is limited, but until the dust settles on the heptode adventures, I think I will stick with the mil-spec Soviet bottles I'm using. Imaging and other characteristics are very good, at least for my listening library.   There's also something emotionally...

We should throw in a pair of sound-powered phones with variable attenuators and a set of crystal earphones to round out the testing.  

Mine drives my Alessandro MS1 just fine, 32 ohms just like other Grados. Lots of unused volume potential!

Koss Portapro for night listening and listening while traveling or during dental procedures. Light, easy on the ears, clear headphone that seems to be pretty balanced, good imaging, with the right amount of isolation. 

The PortaPro is my nighttime and travelling headphone set. The bag that comes with them is too small for use, so I'll order one of the Good Cans bags instead.   These are light and comfortable enough to wear at night AND in the 90+ degree weather with high humidity we are experiencing on the...

Given the bewildering number of tube rolling options available to LD owners, it might be useful to render these choices into a logic/decision tree chart for each model (and version?) that included comments from the many alpha testers on Head-Fi. I know it would make my decisions easier as to...

Not to pick nits, but shouldn't the Moderators open a Turbulent X Driver Forum? The discussions of modding by replacing the most vital component begins to feel a bit like Lincoln's Axe or The Ship Of Theseus-all parts have been replaced many times, but the name remains the same.  

My Chinese isn't good. Is there an English language site?