I have both the Grado SR 60's and a pair of Sennheiser HD 580's. I wore out
the earpads on my Grados and when I got new ones, I cut holes out of the
pads using an exacto knife and a quarter as a template. This seems to make
them less boomy and clearer sounding for my ageing ears. In fact, when my
friend and I compared them to his SR 80's, they sounded alike.

I've had a lot of cheap headphones (Koss, Panasonic, Sony, etc.) and the
Grado SR 60s are very nice to listen to. Unlike most people, I find them
comfortable. The only annoyance I've had with them is that they tend to
twist up funny if you're not careful (each of the ear pieces 'swivels').
But this is only a minor annoyance. Although my Sennheiser HD 580s also
sound great, they were double the price. Soundwise, I can't honestly say I
like one over the other.

But other than price, the Grados do have another advantage: Unlike the
Sennheiser HD 580s, the Grados are low impedance (32 ohms as opposed to 300
for the Sennheisers) which makes them easy to run off of portable CD units.
Most of the newer model portable cd players don't put out the same volume as
older players (to conserve battery life?) and seem to need more sensitive
headphones. When I play classical music, I can't run my Sennheisers off my
Panasonic portable player because the quiet passages are almost inaudible,
but my Grados sound great. Also, if you don't have a headphone amp, I've
read some newsgroup postings (from Arny Krueger and others, I believe) that,
because of their low impedance, the Grados won't sound as distorted with the
headphone jack of a typical integrated amplifier (however, because of their
higher impedance, I can run my Sennheisers off of the speaker outputs of my
25WPC NAD 3020, which allows me to bypass the resistor circuitry of the
headphone output).

So, I'd recommend the SR60's. They look a bit cheap and flimsy, but for the
price I've not heard better.

Roland.


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Andy Hewitt wrote:
Although IMHO, it seems a bit pointless testing headphones
that haven't been 'broken in' anyway.

In all my years of using headphones in a pro capacity, I've not found any
that needed 'breaking in'. And if they 'altered' in any way after some use
- what's to stop them continuing to alter as time goes by?

--
*Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.