[shawntp]

Hey folks - I've been through most of the "upper" grado lineup (from HF1-MS2i-RS1) in the past but ultimalty settled into a pair of reference monitors since I telecommute and a pair of MDR7506 for recording guitar tracking.

I am sorry to say my headphone listening in the past year has been reduced and I mainly just use igrado's and iphone (sometimes around the house/dog walking/when away from home).

So - lately ive been listening a little more and some things about the igrado's have bugged me (fit/cable/cosmetics [sound is pretty decent when 1/4 modded IMO) and I keep thinking I would be more comfortable with a fullsized set of grado's and put the reverse 414 pads I have around back on them. My (now gone) HF1's with 414 pads were the most comfortable I ever owned.

I keep thinking though - is it really worth $100 - I thought about SR60 but then I thought so many love this MS-1 and if I am spending a few bucks I might as well go for something that might fit and sound a little better.

Mostly listening to Indie rock/blues these days from my iphone - what do you think?

 

[egidio]

I think that for iphone, sr60 is enough .

 

[F107plus5]

For guitar fans, of course, Alessandro is synonymous with "guitar" and I gotta admit; my MS-1 do a fine job outta the guitar amp. They also do Blues real justice as well without an amp.

Yeah; and I use reversed 414s on my MS-1.

Pretty much a Junior Version of your old MS2i.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

The MS-1 are hands down better than the iGrado. I found the iGrado to be a little too dark and even with the quarter modded pads I had to sell them. My MS-1 are actually very close to a stock pair of RS-2 - crisp clean and balanced, with more comfort than iGrado.

For my son's 10 year birthday this January we went to buy him some Grados, because he wanted my MS-1 and I didn't want to give them up. We took the MS-1 to the store and compared them to the SR-60 and SR-80. The differences between SR-60, SR-80 and MS-1 are not huge, but I found the SR-80 and MS-1 to be more transparent and less colored than the SR-60. (PS: he still managed to stick me with his SR-60 and he uses the MS-1)

However, I have to warn you that the HF-1 sound better, but the MS-1 are still surprisingly good, and if they get torn up using them mobile they are easy to replace. They are infinitely more comfortable than the iGrado.

One more headphone to consider, that sounds similar to a Grado 60/80 or MS-1 and that is the Koss KSC-35. You could buy those for $35-45, then buy a $1.99 headphone at partsexpress.com and swap the headband over to the KSC-35 in place of the ear clips = VERY comfortable fantastic sounding portable headphone for half the cost of the MS-1.

 

[Night Surfer]

I prefer the darm/warm iGrado signature. They are perfect for me.
I could/would spend 10x as much but why?