[jonathan c]

Laurel Mountains ‘audio loft’ this weekend :

[Another reminder that the HeadAmp Gilmore Lite II + Golden Reference PSU is a wonderfully matched amplifier for Grado headphones, period - PS500e this evening.]

 

[ledzep]

For those who like to mix it up a bit and pad roll, try out the Yaxi pads on the 80x's ( may be good for others as well ) not the Yaxi pads for the grado but the ones for the Koss porta pro as they are slightly smaller but do fit ok and make the part covering the driver thinner than stock pads and Yaxi grado pads and create a slight concave over the driver, very comfortable and the results are very good, low end is tight and punchy with no bleed into the mids, vocals clear and top end good as well, a surprisingly good little mod for those interested

 

[rocketron]

For those who like to mix it up a bit and pad roll, try out the Yaxi pads on the 80x's ( may be good for others as well ) not the Yaxi pads for the grado but the ones for the Koss porta pro as they are slightly smaller but do fit ok and make the part covering the driver thinner than stock pads and Yaxi grado pads and create a slight concave over the driver, very comfortable and the results are very good, low end is tight and punchy with no bleed into the mids, vocals clear and top end good as well, a surprisingly good little mod for those interested

Thanks for this.
These look identical too the Sennheiser HD414 pads.

Just did a search and the Yaxi pads £11.80 on Amazon.
Search Sennheiser HD414 pads and there £5.00 from Sennheiser + £4.90 shipping.

So guess which one I bought

 

[ledzep]

Thanks for this.
These look identical too the Sennheiser HD414 pads.

Just did a search and the Yaxi pads £11.80 on Amazon.
Search Sennheiser HD414 pads and there £5.00 from Sennheiser + £4.90 shipping.

So guess which one I bought

Yeah as you know I originally bought the Yaxi ones for the Koss I was modding, would be interesting to know if there is a difference between them both on the grados.

 

[rocketron]

Yeah as you know I originally bought the Yaxi ones for the Koss I was modding, would be interesting to know if there is a deference between them both on the grados.

When I receive them I shall post photos.

I would think they’re very similar if not identical.
I have always found the Senns pads to be a better quality foam.
They seem softer and they last a very long time.

I used them all the time on my Grado HF1.
Like you said they slightly indent towards the middle of the driver.
They’re firmer on the outer edge compared to the Grado standard pads.
This might change the sound a little.

Definitely worth trying.

 

[rocketron]

I also use the Grado donut pads in reverse on the modded Senns PX100.
Standard Grado pads fit as well.

 

[Plautus001]

I still don't understand why the original GS1000 doesn't get any notice around here...

I was watching Rodger Water"s Us + Them first using my favorite combo of the SR325X and Asgard 3... which was awesome and thunderous...

However, when I switched to the GS1000 there was way more detail and still good bass.

Note - the GS1000 needs much more power than the SR325X... from "6" to :3" on the dial.

 

[Gippy]

I still don't understand why the original GS1000 doesn't get any notice around here...

If memory serves, it was released in the second half of 2006. Then in early 2007, the i-series models were launched including the GS1000i. So the original GS1000 was on the market for less than a year. What makes it more confusing is that the GS1000i's lettering is simply "GS1000". There won't be much talk about a discontinued model that's over 15 years old and that few people own.

 

[ledzep]

Does anyone know a good Grado mod/repair person? I have a few items Grados I want to get fitted with removable mini-xlr jacks. I worked with a great guy I met on Reddit, but he's been out of commission for awhile now. I can DIY it myself -- but with some of the higher end/vintage stuff I'm hesistent as I'm still a bit n00bish.

Sorry late reply just seen this, they will take mini XLR but the working area is right and you have to make a considerable larger hole for the XLR jack. The standard hole is around 2mm on the grados hence why some use 2.5mm mono sockets as they just push in, I prefer 3.5 and just use a diamond file gently to get a snug fit, the 3.5 are a bit more robust ( I've hated 2.5mm after an incident with a AK240 years ago ) Now if your putting mini xlrs in aluminium housings no problem, just mill out the hole, but with woods they are delicate and depending on which way the grain runs you could end up splitting them, for me personally and I'll take apart pretty much anything whatever the cost, I'd give it a miss as it's more hassle than it's worth just to get an alternative connection and in the future who knows you might want to sell them and some people like the grados as stock so you can reverse the mod and go back to fully wired with the holes only being marginally bigger, but with the XLR you've got great big holes to fill, although you could use the lower half of a grado cable to fill them ( sorry tow rope cable joke ). In a nutshell 2.5/3.5 are easier and neater and reversible and achieve the same desired result. Remember the 3 rules,
1. Don't get high on your own supply.
2. Don't cross the streams.
3. Dont split the woods.

 

[headfry]

Borrowing a friend’s Mojo 2 and genuinely can’t hear a difference between it and an Apple USB-C adaptor, going to the RS1x. I’ll have a play with the cross feed modes but I was expecting at least some sort of noticeable difference

For me there's an enormous difference in sq between the two - night and day - the connecting cable can make a very big difference as well. Perhaps the Mojo2's sound isn't your best fit soundwise; it is for me.

 

[Strat1117]

I freely acknowledge that I am much more well versed in things Sennheiser than I am in things Grado, but after a month with the RS-1e (I am aware that this is not a universal favorite among the Grado Illuminati), I believe I’m starting to get it. (Once upon a time I owned a pair of SR-60, which I managed to leave on an LIRR train never to be seen again, and I also had an original RS-2, long gone, which I sold because I could never get them to sound as good as my Sennheiser 580’s - although, in retrospect, it was more likely an amplifier mismatch than a headphone problem. Live and learn. Anyway, I don’t count either of those prior Grado experiences as having really taught me much if anything.)

The last ten pages of this thread have been very informative (except for the part where the one guy told the other guy he wasn’t having fun right and the other guy got all petulant and they both pulled out their slide rules and started going at each other like two eighth grade girls, but that’s the interwebs for you - if you listen to music without a slide rule, you’re eventually gonna get flamed by some alleged ‘engineer’ with a BIG slide rule complex.)

Anyway, one of the things I like about the Grados is the captive wire - simply for the fact that eliminates one more variable for me to worry about. Grado decided for me, and presumably included the very same cable they used to voice the headphone. That’s good enough for me (and, yes, I am a cable believer from way back - most of my main system is wired with MIT which cost more than a new pair of RS-1s, even pre-owned; so my observation is purely a welcome relief from responsibility, not an anti-cable thing). My reptilian brain especially likes that they provide an extension cable made of the same stuff, since my spot on the couch is about 13 feet from the amp, which means I need >15ft of cable for comfort, and mixing and matching wire can lead to unpredictable results. I don’t like that the earcups spin around freely - good for comfort and fit, no doubt, but it forces me to be careful about over-twisting the captive cable. It seems like the same thing could be accomplished by allowing 360 degrees of twist with a stop to keep it from going to 720 or 1440, no? Minor quibble at best.

More importantly, I am intrigued by the conversation about pad rolling. Although in order to get acclimated, I listened with a $13.99 pair of Vever jumbo pads (which are very nicely made and reasonably comfortable), I did not resize that the oem G-Cush pads employ multiple densities. That will surely affect the sound signature and bears further examination, although it sounds like they may do the opposite of what I’d want, which is to warm them up a tad and to bring out the bottom a little more, while retaining all of that that glorious ‘you are there’ presence and detail. Maybe that’s what the Statement and Professionsl Series are for, but I’m old enough to remember when the RS-1 was TOTL, and I still think of it (nostalgically) in that light. Or, maybe I just need a pair of Dekoni sheepskins - Dekoni’s graph certainly makes it appear as if the sheepskins provide a big bass boost, almost scarily so.

All that being said, I am currently enjoying the RS-1e’s very much totally stock - L pads and all, just the way the Grado boys intended - plugged into the low impedance jack of my OG Burson HA-160. The natural musical warmth of this 10+ year old amp (missing from their newer products, imho), seems to be a perfect match for these Grados (the high output jack works wonders with the Senn 650’s, so maybe I just dig this amp), but I am sitting here listening to a recently released Keith Jarrett solo album streaming on Spotify from my iMac through a not particularly fancy Audioengine D2 wireless upsampling dac (not exactly hi-res), and I feel totally immersed. I am onstage, standing right next to a Steinway grand piano. Couldn’t be any happier.

And that’s enough rambling for this morning.

YMMV, just my $.03, etc., ad nauseum

Enjoy!!

 

[headfry]

Good post. As far as being a cable "believer", it is obvious to me that cables can sound different and that many generic/low cost cables sound clearly inferior to certain others. What I've come to believe is that for some users, given that the equipment is up to showing the difference is that the difference that the sound improvement some cables can make goes against their value system or that for them the difference isn't worth the cost. Mainly the former I suspect, but everyone is entitled to their own judgement when it comes to their passion.

Life is too short to argue.

 

[Strat1117]

good post. As far as being a cable "believer", it is obvious to me that cables can sound different and that many generic/low cost cables sound clearly inferior to certain others. What I've come to believe is that for some users, given that the equipment is up to showing the difference is that the difference that the sound improvement some cables can make goes against the value system of some or that the difference isn't worth the cost. Mainly the former I suspect, but everyone is entitled to their own judgement when it comes to their passion.

Life is too short to argue.

Thanks,

I most assuredly do NOT wish to ignite yet another cable flame war, but I definitely agree with you that it is economics, not ‘science’, that primarily fuels the invariably unduly heated debate. I also completely agree that the prices of some (most) high end cables are manifestly ridiculous. That is not, however, the same as saying that cables don’t matter. They clearly do. The real question is whether or not the cable in question is worth the price of admission, and that can only be decided by the individual buyer. A guy with a pair of $4000 Utopias might rightly think a set of $500 cables is worth it for the incremental improvement he hears on his highly resolving cans. A different guy, with a pair of $199 Beats would almost certainly (and just as rightly) disagree.

Anyway, back on topic, I for one am happy that Grado has chosen to take that decision out of my hands. Even in its best light, cable matching is often a slippery and unpredictable slope (unless you are convinced that wires make no contribution to the sound, in which case you are blissfully free of this particular ‘burden’).

Plus, reasonable minds may differ and all that first day of law school stuff.

‘Nuff said.

YMMV, just my $.03, etc., ad nauseum

 

[rocketron]

I freely acknowledge that I am much more well versed in things Sennheiser than I am in things Grado, but after a month with the RS-1e (I am aware that this is not a universal favorite among the Grado Illuminati), I believe I’m starting to get it. (Once upon a time I owned a pair of SR-60, which I managed to leave on an LIRR train never to be seen again, and I also had an original RS-2, long gone, which I sold because I could never get them to sound as good as my Sennheiser 580’s - although, in retrospect, it was more likely an amplifier mismatch than a headphone problem. Live and learn. Anyway, I don’t count either of those prior Grado experiences as having really taught me much if anything.)

The last ten pages of this thread have been very informative (except for the part where the one guy told the other guy he wasn’t having fun right and the other guy got all petulant and they both pulled out their slide rules and started going at each other like two eighth grade girls, but that’s the interwebs for you - if you listen to music without a slide rule, you’re eventually gonna get flamed by some alleged ‘engineer’ with a BIG slide rule complex.)

Anyway, one of the things I like about the Grados is the captive wire - simply for the fact that eliminates one more variable for me to worry about. Grado decided for me, and presumably included the very same cable they used to voice the headphone. That’s good enough for me (and, yes, I am a cable believer from way back - most of my main system is wired with MIT which cost more than a new pair of RS-1s, even pre-owned; so my observation is purely a welcome relief from responsibility, not an anti-cable thing). My reptilian brain especially likes that they provide an extension cable made of the same stuff, since my spot on the couch is about 13 feet from the amp, which means I need >15ft of cable for comfort, and mixing and matching wire can lead to unpredictable results. I don’t like that the earcups spin around freely - good for comfort and fit, no doubt, but it forces me to be careful about over-twisting the captive cable. It seems like the same thing could be accomplished by allowing 360 degrees of twist with a stop to keep it from going to 720 or 1440, no? Minor quibble at best.

More importantly, I am intrigued by the conversation about pad rolling. Although in order to get acclimated, I listened with a $13.99 pair of Vever jumbo pads (which are very nicely made and reasonably comfortable), I did not resize that the oem G-Cush pads employ multiple densities. That will surely affect the sound signature and bears further examination, although it sounds like they may do the opposite of what I’d want, which is to warm them up a tad and to bring out the bottom a little more, while retaining all of that that glorious ‘you are there’ presence and detail. Maybe that’s what the Statement and Professionsl Series are for, but I’m old enough to remember when the RS-1 was TOTL, and I still think of it (nostalgically) in that light. Or, maybe I just need a pair of Dekoni sheepskins - Dekoni’s graph certainly makes it appear as if the sheepskins provide a big bass boost, almost scarily so.

All that being said, I am currently enjoying the RS-1e’s very much totally stock - L pads and all, just the way the Grado boys intended - plugged into the low impedance jack of my OG Burson HA-160. The natural musical warmth of this 10+ year old amp (missing from their newer products, imho), seems to be a perfect match for these Grados (the high output jack works wonders with the Senn 650’s, so maybe I just dig this amp), but I am sitting here listening to a recently released Keith Jarrett solo album streaming on Spotify from my iMac through a not particularly fancy Audioengine D2 wireless upsampling dac (not exactly hi-res), and I feel totally immersed. I am onstage, standing right next to a Steinway grand piano. Couldn’t be any happier.

And that’s enough rambling for this morning.

YMMV, just my $.03, etc., ad nauseum

Enjoy!!

Pleased you’re enjoying your Grado.
Welcome too the more mid forward club and less dark side.
Only joking.
I’m a Grado and Senns fan as well.

You could look into after market rod blocks.
These are made of Ali and can stop the cups from twisting around and around and around .
This is one of the causes of the cable twist kink on the stock cables.

I too still think of the RS1 as a totl Grado.

I remember your Burson amp as I had one.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.
Just because it’s slightly older doesn’t mean anything.
Newer is not always best.

Enjoy the journey of pad rolling.
Everyone has their own take on what works.
All that matters is what you enjoy.

I even use after market leather pads on HD800s and thats considered a complete no go by the Senns elite.
Still my ears my enjoyment.

Enjoy.

 

[MaiLam]

For me there's an enormous difference in sq between the two - night and day - the connecting cable can make a very big difference as well. Perhaps the Mojo2's sound isn't your best fit soundwise; it is for me.

Oh on the contrary, I’d say I was a fan of the Mojo 2 - it was as good as Apple’s adaptor