So I recently met someone that was leaving the hobby, and bought their E-MU Ebony to compare with my Teaks. The mids seemed more recessed, but still fairly clear, particularly in the upper mids. The bass hit harder than the Teaks, though I found they were a little less controlled and bled into the mids just a touch. The subbass levels also seemed about the same. Not 100% sure on this, but it also seemed like the Ebony handled transients better and weren't as "blended" as the Teaks with complex music.
While the Ebonys were more exciting and the cups were gorgeous, I really liked the liquid Teak sound so I was planning on selling the Ebonys. But then I came across a listing for TH-900 Urushi cups and couldn't pass them up. The TH-900 caught my eye when I first started the hobby because of its unique look, but the price was always out of my league. The cups were on my bucket list since then, but I was never able to get a trade going until now.
The first thing I want to note is that the Urushi cups were a
TIGHT fit. One of them wouldn't even go over the driver ring at first. I thought maybe they'd shrunk from moisture loss since the owner had kept them in storage, so I tried the plastic bag trick for 2 nights to rehydrate them. They didn't expand as much as I hoped, but it was just enough to get it squeezed on and screwed in. Wondering if any others who have tried swapping the Urushi cups had as much trouble as I did.
Some pics of the different cups for comparison.
The cups are all about the same diameter and thickness, but the inner depth for the Teaks is shaped differently as others have noted. I think the Ebony and the Urushi cups are identical in shape, just the Urushi cups have damping material glued onto the inside.
Weight-wise, the Ebony was noticeably heavier than the Teak and Urushi. The Urushi was surprisingly light. I wasn't able to weigh them but it felt similar to the Teak.
Sound-wise, they all sound noticeably different, but it's also subtle enough that it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why while swapping between them. But just from my initial impression:
- The Teaks still have the best mids. The Ebony and Urushi are more recessed in comparison and just don't have the same clarity or presence. The mids sound clear, but it's like they're blunted compared to the Teaks.
- The Ebony has the most bass and slam, the Urushi is more similar to the Teaks in amount and control. But the Urushi has some subbass texture that the others don't. It kind of gives me planar bass vibes.
- Urushi sounds more "blended" like the Teaks when handling transients, but otherwise most of the tonality is very similar to the Ebony. It's almost like a laidback Ebony.
- I feel like there's some difference in soundstage and imaging between them, but my ears aren't quite good at picking up the subtleties there so can't really articulate that.
Might get a chance to use a better A/B setup for comparisons, so will update if that happens. I thought I'd just swap the Teak and Urushi cups every once in a while, but since my Urushi pair are so hard to fit, I might just keep them on the second E-MU and figure out what I want to do with the Ebony cups later.
