I found a wooden shell I could use immediately to try an HF2-style impression.
The larger shell was so much more dynamic, I ended up tossing the make-shift wood front in favor of simple single-body aluminum in both shells.
These rings are too large for the stock gimbal ring. Fortunately, I have replacement aluminum I intend to use to replace the stock ring. In the meantime, I am nothing less than shocked - both by the simplicity of the design and its effectiveness. The bass is authoritative while the high end is crisp and open. There's no loss of Grado intimacy but the capture of so much detail, particularly the airy artifacts of the recording environment, leaves a much greater sense of soundstage.
Listening to Bob Marley's
Stir It Up, I can hear the little reverb effects built into the guitar amp. For the first time, I'm thinking of how the vocals have been synthesized to add a slight reverb. On Korn's
Hold On, the presentation was full and dynamic - so dynamic I had to better brace the drivers and add more Dynamat to stop a "chirp, chirp, chirp" I was getting from my right driver. Now, everything is fine and I'm swallowed up in a wall of sound. Suzanne's Vega's
Undertow leaves more space between the hearer and the vocals. She doesn't feel in your face but more distant and her voice is balanced against the other details of the recording, including the echoes of the room (real or simulated). All of the instruments in the track just crackle. The bass is authoritative but controlled. (I'm having an eargasm.)
On Tom Petty's
Breakdown, the drumming has a heavy thump to it but it's tight and controlled. I can hear the fret squeaks on the guitar, the whispers, and the sonic black in-between the notes. I can hear the snaps and the guitar has a fiery quality that's more vivid. This is a studio recording of a mellow song but there's a rawness to it that the aluminum really brings out. I had to cut back the volume a tad with Smash Mouth's
Walkin' on the Sun but damned if it doesn't feel as fresh as a sandwich in a ziplock bag. There's an instrument that sounds like a cross between a saxophone and a cazoo that just has this throatiness that's hard not to notice. On Styx's
Crystal Ball, the acoustic guitar work is as loud, if not louder, than the vocals. When the chorus kicks in and the full bass lands, it's totally impactful but tight. I'm having that experience I had with the HD800, where it feels like an LP, not MP3.
On Body Count's
Momma's Gotta Die Tonight, I'm getting a crispness bordering on sibilance. I'm not just getting reverb, I'm getting the slight asynchrony between the channels. On Steely Dan's
Deacon Blues, I'm simultaneously aware of the slight echo to the vocals while feeling an authoritative - but not overbearing - thump from the combined bass and drum. I can't believe the balance! On Pablo Cruise's
Love Will Find a Way, the echo off the drums is as present as the thump. On The Rolling Stone's
When The Whip Comes Down, I'm reminded of the SR325 on its best day. Flight of the Conchord's
I'm Not Crying sounds so natural, it's like being there. In fact, I plunked $125 down to "be there," a couple of rows away from the stage when these guys came to town and - while there's no soundstage quite like real life - the sound I'm getting from these cans is eerily natural.
John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk's
Off Minor sounds even more spacious - and live. The decay rate of aluminum really helps add that sense of space, not by echoing high frequency sounds but by going to black quicker and leaving room for subtler details. I have no idea how I'm going to integrate all this with what I have, or whether I need to, but I'm having a jaw-dropping experience.
On The Who's
Pinball Wizard, the bass lines stand out as much as the acoustic guitar riffs. Surprisingly, one of the bassiest tracks was Ambrosia's 70s ballad How Much I Feel, a song whose bass beat was as overcooked as its nauseating pick-up line ("I've got a wife now, years we've been growing strong, but there's something I've just got to say, sometimes when we make love, I still see your face"). I was going to toss David Sanborn's
Butterfat as an exception, where I wasn't as impressed, but when the saxes kicked in, I had to eat those thoughts. The Charlie Daniels Band's
The South is Gonna Do It Again features an eerie, sizzling fiddle solo but these cans also capture the distance. Collective Soul's
Where The River Flows is a great example of what you can get with good decay rate. Those gritty guitars never sounded more hypnotic and the vocals aren't in your face, either.
Not every track is equally euphonic. On the Rolling Stone's
Satisfaction, the detail undoes the recording, at least to some extent. The vocals are too distant. The bass line and the tamborine are equally prominent - an unlikelihood to be sure. For the first time, I feel critical of this recording and the recording levels of separate tracks I can now make out. ELO's
Mambo, from
On The Third Day, betrays similar dubious studio choices, though the crispness of this early-70s recording is refreshing. I don't think I've ever heard the bass line as distinct as I hear it here. The vocals are impeccable, as are the pre-full-orchestra strings. The picking, legato and tremelo are scrumptious. This is a better recording than I had ever heard it before. Alanis Morisette's
Ironic is a totally different recording. The song doesn't just go from a break-down beginning to commercial fullness. There's a wah-wah kind of shimmering that goes from channel to channel, a kind of slick, subtle, subliminal excitement thrown in - and now I hear it.
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