[Beatreg]

Yeah...it’s fine for short use but really starts irritating for long sessions.

 

[tan1415]

How much tax and fee did u have to pay extra to customs if you have it delivered to Netherlands?

 

[Laurenesi]

I paid EUR 188,00 for the headphones and EUR 53,00 for the taxes etc so EUR 241,00 in total.

The cheapest price for the HD650 is EUR 320,00.

 

[WilcoRoger]

In the EU you pay 3 things for imports from outside (as Massdrop first ships the packages from Ireland to their New Jersey distribution centre, it will come from outside, i.e. the USA)

- Import duty: that's 0,5% for headphones
- Your national VAT: that's somewhere between19-27% on the landed price (cost+freight), depends on the country
- Whatever transaction fee you need to pay to clear customs. I could have used the post office's service for over 30€ or do it directly online with the customs office for free.

You MIGHT get lucky and the package slips through the clearing process, but don't count on it.

 

[Ichos]

It appears that the massdrop EU test program will sooner or later be fully functioning and include the Sennheiser drops shipped from EU with a slight increase at the asking price.

 

[WilcoRoger]

If they were to ship from the EU to the EU, we'd avoid the import duty and the transaction fee, but unfortunately not the national VAT. (Just look at how amazon is adding the national VAT depending on the country of delivery. Go to amazon.de, they'll have. price with the German VAT included, but if you specify a different EU country for delivery, the price will adjust a few-% to reflect the destination country's VAT rate) The shipping rate might drop a bit, too.

So what I foresee is that in this scenario they'd advertise an xxx € + yy% VAT (yy probably the Irish rate) and add a note that yy varies by destination country. I'm not really conversant with EU tax regulation, but I think they cannot sell with origin country VAT-% if they sell over a relatively small amount (100k€ or so)

 

[Ichos]

I have made some rough calculations for the test shipping of mcth with Greece as destination country.
It appears to be about 30€ cheaper as opposed to USA shipping with customs etc.

 

[tafens]

I just bought the 4XX from the EU test program, it cost $210 including shipping and VAT from Germany (in EU you pay VAT in the country of sale, not the country you ship to). The 4XX cost $160 in the US drop, shipping is usually around $15 (at least it was for the 6XX when I got that). VAT in Sweden is 25% and there’s a $15 import fee.
That would total to: $160+$40(vat)+$15(shipping)+$15(fee)=$230, or
$20 cheaper.. not a whole lot but still. Would be great if the program is a success and more drops would be done like this.

(oh, and on the topic of the thread; I do prefer the 6XX over the 4XX )

 

[Laurenesi]

$20 cheaper.. not a whole lot but still. Would be great if the program is a success and more drops would be done like this.

If the program is a success I wouldn’t be surprised if the drops will become a bit cheaper as well. Fingers crossed, because I’d love to give the Meze 99 Noirs a try. However I’m not that interested as I was with the HD6XX to import them from the States.

 

[znev777]

Oh boy, just did the KISS mod to my 6XX. The word snappy come to mind, and that crappy graininess I hated so much is reduced appreciably. This was a last ditch effort to salvage these before I sold them, these ain't going anywhere now

 

[Nintendam]

Oh boy, just did the KISS mod to my 6XX. The word snappy come to mind, and that ****ty graininess I hated so much is reduced appreciably. This was a last ditch effort to salvage these before I sold them, these ain't going anywhere now

care to elaborate a bit? I did a balanced cable/fiio q1mkii 'upgrade' and to me that was night and day difference, haven't looked into the KISS mod much.

 

[znev777]

It cleans and tightens everything up a fair amount. They always seemed to sound fuzzy or grainy to me but the kiss mod has helped clear it up a considerable amount. The bass is more articulate and not as muddy, it just sounds more energetic. I think the bass extension is a little better too. The tonality is unchanged, at least to me.

It makes sense when I think about it, the mod entails adding dampening materials on part of the driver magnet, and around the inside of the housing. The magnet has been known to fall out part way through this mod, it's just not secured well apparently, so I could see how that might affect the sound. A magnet rattling around, not enough to really hear, but enough to alter the sound. If you look through the grills, you might be able to see the "spider", it's a plastic cage that holds some foam over the back of the magnet, the spider is also thought to introduce some unwanted sonic characteristics, but mostly you have to remove it to do this mod. Mostly the mod is just putting dampening material (I bought a sample kit from a company called second skin, it was under $10) over part of the magnet to secure it properly, and to dampen it. Then more material is added around the magnet as well. The foam that was there before is actually two foam discs, one disc is folded in half and you use a little bit of the sticky dampening material to glue it to itself, and a little bit to secure it to the magnet. Overall the hardest part is really just cutting the material, I used a hobby knife and it was still kind of annoying. There is also another recommended mod that entails removing the thin layer of foam in front of the drivers and cutting a small hole in it by tracing various kinds of coins as a reference, aptly named the "coin mod". This apparently brings the treble forward a bit, but I didn't want that so I abstained.

I get the impression that sennheiser just pumps these things out. I wouldn't say the build quality is bad, just missing that last bit of polish that I feel this mod provides. If really like them as they are, you might not bother, as once you remove the spider, you can't really put it back in the headphones, unless you glued it or something. A good amount of the mod could be done without doing anything irrecoverable, but I don't know how much is attributed to putting the material over the magnet itself, and not just the surrounding area.

 

[Nintendam]

It cleans and tightens everything up a fair amount. They always seemed to sound fuzzy or grainy to me but the kiss mod has helped clear it up a considerable amount. The bass is more articulate and not as muddy, it just sounds more energetic. I think the bass extension is a little better too. The tonality is unchanged, at least to me.

It makes sense when I think about it, the mod entails adding dampening materials on part of the driver magnet, and around the inside of the housing. The magnet has been known to fall out part way through this mod, it's just not secured well apparently, so I could see how that might affect the sound. A magnet rattling around, not enough to really hear, but enough to alter the sound. If you look through the grills, you might be able to see the "spider", it's a plastic cage that holds some foam over the back of the magnet, the spider is also thought to introduce some unwanted sonic characteristics, but mostly you have to remove it to do this mod. Mostly the mod is just putting dampening material (I bought a sample kit from a company called second skin, it was under $10) over part of the magnet to secure it properly, and to dampen it. Then more material is added around the magnet as well. The foam that was there before is actually two foam discs, one disc is folded in half and you use a little bit of the sticky dampening material to glue it to itself, and a little bit to secure it to the magnet. Overall the hardest part is really just cutting the material, I used a hobby knife and it was still kind of annoying. There is also another recommended mod that entails removing the thin layer of foam in front of the drivers and cutting a small hole in it by tracing various kinds of coins as a reference, aptly named the "coin mod". This apparently brings the treble forward a bit, but I didn't want that so I abstained.

I get the impression that sennheiser just pumps these things out. I wouldn't say the build quality is bad, just missing that last bit of polish that I feel this mod provides. If really like them as they are, you might not bother, as once you remove the spider, you can't really put it back in the headphones, unless you glued it or something. A good amount of the mod could be done without doing anything irrecoverable, but I don't know how much is attributed to putting the material over the magnet itself, and not just the surrounding area.

Thank you for the detailed reply, really appreciate it.

I mean everything you mentioned Sonic wise sounds great improvement wise, I'll certainly look further into it.

So with the mkii there's a bass boost switch, which is quite nice, but it's more mid-bass punch than sub-bass. I feel like that muddiness or veil you speak of goes away when I switch the bass boost off, it gets clear and sparkly and energetic but then lacks a bit of that lower oomph. I mean it's present, like the sub-bass on ex1000's, just after the boost it feels a little more mids to high's pronounced.

I've done some small mods on my Grados, which I definitey loved, just not sure if I'm ready to take the plunge on the Senns yet!

 

[Deftone]

It cleans and tightens everything up a fair amount. They always seemed to sound fuzzy or grainy to me but the kiss mod has helped clear it up a considerable amount. The bass is more articulate and not as muddy, it just sounds more energetic. I think the bass extension is a little better too. The tonality is unchanged, at least to me.

Sounds identical to what a HD660 is.

 

[znev777]

Sounds identical to what a HD660 is.

Hmmm, maybe they picked up on some common complaints, ie the bass, graininess, and the veil and tried to address those. That seems to be what modders are going afterwards for sure. I've never heard the 660s, but now I'm a kind of interested. Tyll's article shows the interiors, and the driver housing is quite a bit different, maybe they addressed some issues there? Then again the driver is different too, so who really knows except sennheiser.

The article
https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/sennheiser-hd-660-s-over-ear-open-headphones