I definitely don't want to interrupt the recabling discussion going on here (I'm planning to recable too, so I can use all the discussion/hints/tips/pics I can get!), but I've had a somewhat harrowing 2 1/2 weeks during which these headphones probably quite *literally* preserved my sanity, so I kind of feel like I owe these little babies a review. It's long, but hopefully interesting.
I was originally looking for some flatter, more heavy duty cans (still considering the Shure SRH-440/840s for that purpose), but I didn't have the money together, and my seven year old IEMs were dying a not-so-slow death, so finding a cheaper, more casual pair of phones to fill the gap became a priority. I found the uptowns for $50 and pulled the trigger - they seemed like a purchase I could live with, and their lightness was a plus, since I have rheumatoid arthritis in my neck... I figured if I got the uptowns and liked them, then on the days when the Shures (or whatever I end up going with) are just too heavy for my joints to deal with, I'd have an acceptable substitute. That was really all I was looking for out of these.... is the sound halfway decent and can I wear them for long periods?
Two days after the uptowns were in the mail, I was lying in the ICU with severe bilateral pneumonia and pleurisy. My lungs have a disturbing tendency to bail on me with no warning, so this was not the first time something like this had happened... but it was definitely both the most sudden, and the most severe. Between the constant, arduous work of breathing and the twilight zone nature of the ICU (lights always on, monitors always going, staff always in and out, etc), I had very little grasp of reality or where I was, beyond "not at home" and "possibly already dead." I ended up on a ventilator, which gave me a much needed physical break, but didn't do much for my sense of awareness or ability to orient myself - and without being able to do that, it was very difficult to keep my vital signs stable.
The next day, a friend of mine from out of state drove to my house for the express purpose of picking up the uptowns from my mailbox and bringing them to the hospital for me. (Yes, I have great friends.) We slid them on over all the tubing, tape, leads, mask, etc... and my buddy plugged them into my laptop and pulled up some music.
Immediately, I could no longer hear all the monitors/air flow/general racket around me. Then the music started, and it sounded like I was in one of my favorite places in the world - about 3 feet away from a dear friend of mine, soaking in an intimate solo gig, just him and a mic and a guitar. I only get to experience those gigs every few years, since said artist splits his time between the US and Ireland, so to have that sensation from headphones - any headphones - blew my mind. Then I saw my buddy laughing and pointing at the monitors... where, of course, all my vital signs had gone steady as a rock. Who needs drugs and ventilation, just give me some good music!
I have not taken these headphones off for more than a few minutes at a time in two and a half weeks. I've slept in them every night, quite comfortably (they are no worse for wear. I probably won't continue to sleep in them once I've recovered the ability to do things like roll over in bed... but right now, that's not a concern.) I've played an incredible variety of music through them, and I have yet to find anything that sounds bad - everything from Chopin to U2 to spoken word stuff is just really *nice*. It's not flat... it's not accurate.... it's just *nice*... effortless to listen to, clear, and balanced enough to be revealing but with enough of a signature to them to still qualify as "fun." The soundstage in these is truly impressive for a closed headphone, too. (It is worth noting that I have a small head - if I fiddle with the way the cups sit over my ears, I can make the soundstage dramatically worse... but the way they *naturally* sit on my head, it happens to be almost preternaturally open sounding and separated, while still maintaining the isolation. So I do think I just got lucky with the fit, but I love it anyway.)
Needless to say, in that 2 1/2 weeks, these things have been in the wars already, through no fault of my own. A few times, they've been dropped on the floor from a height of about 4 feet (thanks to nurses not paying attention when they're flinging things off the bed), and survived with no ill effects. They've gotten wet from nebulizer solution, saline solution, heparin flushes, and the occasional mishap with a suction catheter - they've wiped off every time. I've dripped an ungodly amount of sweat on these poor things - you can't tell. I don't like the volume slider and there is some slight channel imbalance, but the flat cable *works* in terms of not tangling... I've woken up to find it wound around my oxygen cannula, my Bipap mask, my picc line and my telemetry leads simultaneously (don't ask how that happens, I don't know), and all I have to do is unplug the jack and give the uptown cable a tug, and it just slithers free, even while all my other lines tie in a knot.
My pulmonologist remarked the other day that he thinks these headphones are why I managed to weather such a long ICU stay without ending up with some ICU psychosis (a real thing that happens when you can't orient yourself to time of day/location/what's going on around you etc because of how surreal the ICU itself is. It's a temporary state, but it can take days to weeks *after* you're out of the ICU to get to the point where you can speak in coherent sentences and remember where you are, if you're unlucky enough to have ICU psychosis set in during your stay... the brain takes a while to reboot to normal). And, I repeat, my *doctor* thinks that these headphones are why I haven't had to deal with that. Which is pretty cool.
They're not the best headphones money can buy, and I'm sure they won't be the best headphones I'll ever own... but for an incredibly comfortable little $50 workhorse to send good music into my brain with which my body can regulate my breathing... they've been an absolute gem.
And I never would have known they existed without Head-Fi, so thanks to everyone who posted about them on this thread and elsewhere... it was researching here that led me to the Uptowns as an option in the first place.
And now, back to the recabling discussion.... has anyone been able to squeeze a female jack into the cups so as to do a detachable cable mod, or are the cups too shallow to do something like that on these without potential disaster? I prefer my headphones to have detachable cables because I'm a wheelchair user, so being able to disconnect the cable from the headphones entirely when I might otherwise run it over is the most practical thing for me - but if no one's tried that yet with these, I'd really rather not be the first. I'll live with a regular cable mod if I have to, out of profound respect for what these have done for me.
Please post a pic! Very excited to see it.
