I guess I'll just go ahead and recommend the Sony wh1000's.

He said he wanted the best - but it's mainly for TV/movie watching and to cancel out a noisy neighborhood.

My friend is looking for a comfortable set of headphones. He was thinking about Bose so I said I would help him out. There's the Sennheiser Momentum 3.0 on sale for that price now. Any other recommendations? Sony WH1000MX3? WH1000MX4? B&W PX7? Shure Aonic 50?

  I usually just slide the glasses' arms up over the top of the pads...and not just with the JVC's.

  Yeah, I never cared for them at all until I did my mods. (beginning somewhere around p.61 here - that was so long ago.)

I had the somewhat same impression as theheadphoneguy until I modified them - so unless you want to take them apart and dampen them...... though I have no experience with those Sony's.

Did you see if tightening the screws inside the headband helped? If they're solid, try unscrewing them and looking inside.

  They sound pretty good to me (modded) for a set of $25 headphones, that is.

  For headphones under $50, my criteria is that they just don't make my ears bleed or feel like they're drilling holes in my head! 

  I really didn't like these at all until I did mods on them. If you're not going to return them, I suggest that you do so. My mods are on p.58 on this thread and there's continuing discussion of it and its variations from there.

That's funny because my pair is rather tilted towards the high end.

Quote:   There's a huge difference in sound from my Denon receiver and my cheap mp3 player.   With my receiver, I can easily hear the short-comings in this very inexpensive set of phones as nice as they sound for the price. With my mp3 player, I rather like it because it's a good...

Quote:   Funny - they do free shipping so it'll be more expensive to buy it at the store since you'll have to pay taxes.

Quote: When I first got them, I thought they were not good at all. After doing a mod (p.58 post 869 without covering the three white ports), I think they're excellent for the price.

Quote:   !!!!   Great! I'm glad to help!   (Even though I came up with this idea myself, I have since learned that others had been doing this to other headphones before.)

Quote:   Nothing under the white tape? when you take that off with the three screws, you can look behind it.

Quote:   My personal take on them is that they weren't very good to begin with but the internal mods made them pretty good. Still not crazy about the mid-range but the nice thing is that with all the mods, you can strengthen or weaken either the low, mid or high frequencies to suit your...

Quote:   I didn't care as much for the sound with the holes covered. I even notice the difference depending on the number of holes covered.   As for the overall sound, let's not forget that these are $25 hp's.  

Quote:   That's OK. I don't think you missed anything that great.

Quote:     Nice pic/set-up!

Quote:   Do you have s500's already? I'd recommend keeping those and doing the mods on those. What I would do is, pull off the pads, put duct tape all around the inside plastic surfaces (the heavier, the better) but leaving the holes uncovered - the ports that are covered by the JVC white...

Quote:   I haven't heard the s500's but based on what I've read here, I'd go with the 500's. Though I would recommend that you read this thread from p. 53 on about my modifications and other people's opinions on doing mine slightly differently and do that with the s500's.

Quote:   Here's a photo of pulling one off. I think they're somewhat tight so you'll have to pull a bit.  

Quote:   Glad you like the mods!  

Quote:   They're ports. Have you even listened to bass coming out of the ports of a bass reflex speaker? Same thing.   I find the effect is more or less the same. With the ports covered up, I get fuller sound but more resonant boomy bass. With the ports open, the bass is tighter but...