MuppetFace
A Special Snowflake
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2010
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I've been thinking a lot about the Charleston. It looks amazing in my opinion (though I know plenty of people find it utterly tacky). I was ready to plunk down a considerable amount for one on a few occasions, one of those quite recently in fact. Then I did some research and discovered some interesting things.
First off, the sound is usually described as being pretty piss-pour by those who have heard them. The drivers seem to be based on one of Sennheiser's lower-tier models, and their sound falls bellow the performance threshold of the HD600 and HD650 as a result. In and of itself not that big of a deal, because it's a collectable and you don't really buy these sorts of things to listen to frequently. I mean, it has gold plating and a designer leather belt grafted onto it. In general I find the question of value and performance quite nebulous, and I don't think it's so easy to put a universalized pricetag on the way something sounds. Even comparing it to another product and coming up with some kind of equation where this should be "2x better" than that based on price seems silly, because you're still trying to quantify a subjective experience.
I started up a conversation with a seller in Germany who had sold quite a few Charlestons, a few of them to head-fiers. What he had to say was quite interesting. First off, there's been rampant misinformation about just how many Charlestons were produced. Looking back at older threads on head-fi, you'll pretty consistently come across the number 400. As in, only 400 produced worldwide for their 50th anniversary. Now that production number seems to be represented as 1000. Talking to the seller, he seemed to believe that even this number was an underestimate. He told me that he himself came across seven sets in a short amount of time with little problem.
He put most of them on ebay and seemed quite amused by the crazy prices they fetched. The one I was most recently considering sold for about $1000. This set was indeed sold by the man in Germany whom I'm talking about. He thought it was hilarious, and admitted that the particular unit in question---the one I was considering---was actually "brought back to life" out of two broken units. He remarked that it probably still had shoe polish on it. I was baffled by this on several levels. For one thing, it really drove home just how insane the collector's market of any hobby can be. Remember Beanie Babies? For some reason all those Home Shopping Network shows where they were trying to sell these little toys that came in Happy Meals for several hundred bucks a pop came flooding back to mind.
The Charleston could be had for about $200 USD before the madness began. Now who knows? Worth is a subjective thing, and for some it'll be worth it. Really a beautiful headphone in my opinion. It's just not a headphone in the strictest sense. It's a collectable.
And I hate myself for likely buying one eventually.
First off, the sound is usually described as being pretty piss-pour by those who have heard them. The drivers seem to be based on one of Sennheiser's lower-tier models, and their sound falls bellow the performance threshold of the HD600 and HD650 as a result. In and of itself not that big of a deal, because it's a collectable and you don't really buy these sorts of things to listen to frequently. I mean, it has gold plating and a designer leather belt grafted onto it. In general I find the question of value and performance quite nebulous, and I don't think it's so easy to put a universalized pricetag on the way something sounds. Even comparing it to another product and coming up with some kind of equation where this should be "2x better" than that based on price seems silly, because you're still trying to quantify a subjective experience.
I started up a conversation with a seller in Germany who had sold quite a few Charlestons, a few of them to head-fiers. What he had to say was quite interesting. First off, there's been rampant misinformation about just how many Charlestons were produced. Looking back at older threads on head-fi, you'll pretty consistently come across the number 400. As in, only 400 produced worldwide for their 50th anniversary. Now that production number seems to be represented as 1000. Talking to the seller, he seemed to believe that even this number was an underestimate. He told me that he himself came across seven sets in a short amount of time with little problem.
He put most of them on ebay and seemed quite amused by the crazy prices they fetched. The one I was most recently considering sold for about $1000. This set was indeed sold by the man in Germany whom I'm talking about. He thought it was hilarious, and admitted that the particular unit in question---the one I was considering---was actually "brought back to life" out of two broken units. He remarked that it probably still had shoe polish on it. I was baffled by this on several levels. For one thing, it really drove home just how insane the collector's market of any hobby can be. Remember Beanie Babies? For some reason all those Home Shopping Network shows where they were trying to sell these little toys that came in Happy Meals for several hundred bucks a pop came flooding back to mind.
The Charleston could be had for about $200 USD before the madness began. Now who knows? Worth is a subjective thing, and for some it'll be worth it. Really a beautiful headphone in my opinion. It's just not a headphone in the strictest sense. It's a collectable.
And I hate myself for likely buying one eventually.
