Grado GS2000e (New Flagship errmahgerd)

Uh? I love something?

 

Sorry. Didn't mean to put words in your mouth. Mea culpa.

 

Thanks. I appreciate that

Actually, I sold the RS2e and will probably sell a few more since I got the Utopia. At work I know use a modded HD650 and am happy.

I still think the RS2e is a pretty good headphone for the right music and when the treble is tamed a bit. It's over priced, but when I to it, I paid way less than retail.

The GS2000e didn't tickle my fancy at all, and from the comments on the TTVJ loaner thread, isn't really getting rave reviews.

 

Has anybody seen the new Grado GH2 limited edition? http://www.ttvjaudio.com/Grado_GH2_Open_Headphone_p/gra0000799.htm

 

There is also a P2000E on the way

 

I agree with this post. I have owned many grados over the last 15 years and most of them are not very good.

With that being said the PS500e is one of my favorite headphones of all time. It is also the warmest in the entire Grado line while still being very "Grado" and detailed.

I thought the GS1000e was pretty bad with bright highs and ressesd mids, lack of sub bass but the PS500e and SR60 are worth hearing IMO.

 

I enjoyed the RS2E actually, but they are overpriced. I preffer to purchase the Grado Style headphones, over the real things. The guys who are building their own drivers to fit into the Grado Wood Cups/pads have managed to make a product that has the same magicfreak show element, without the obnoxious price tag

But you guys know that I like hand built artsy cans, and these are just that, individually sourced and built by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, without the eye gouging price tag

Speaking of the GS2E and PS2E, I'll be getting them both at some point to do a comparison of them to my HE 4, I might have a LCD 2F by then as well. Let's compare ALL the freak show open backs!!! Ahh but no the HE 4 is pretty neutral imo, with a thicker OFC Cable an some Beyer Pads the mids come out. Maybe my wood cups add some mid-range decay to [though I doubt it] still, I'm curious to see how the flagship Grado's compare to my little modded Planar

 

First few blobs of text are background info, relevant points are in coloured font.

Early in my headphone journey (mid-to-late 2000s) and a HF noob, one of the very first things I did was start a thread asking people what headphones I should get for my preferred music genres.

... I know, I know, but cut me some slack, please, I was a teenager.

Anyway, as you might expect, someone tossed in a reco for the SR60s. Grados weren't as easily available here in the Philippines then as they are now (or so I believe based on my admittedly unreliable memory), so I kept panhandling advice. The recommendation made an impression, though, and it wasn't long before I noticed that there were so many damn people singing Grado's praises that I thought they just had to be as good as everyone kept saying they were. I read up voraciously but, being something of a homebody at the time, never really tried finding a pair for myself. That didn't stop me from parroting the recommendations, though; I wanted to fit in, so of course I'd recommend the bloody things despite never having heard any of them before.

... I know. Yeesh, I needed the validation, okay?

Fast forward several years and I finally get to hear my first pair of Grados. I'd gone through several low-end Senns, Pioneer, and AKG cans at this point, among others, and managed to demo some nicer cans like the first Audeze LCD and its ilk at stores. My main cans then were either the AKG K242HD or the K550s out of some Fiio amp I'd paired with a Creative DAP. I had access to a Sony home theatre system I thought must have been as good as a discrete DAC and amp and a lot of CDs, most of which were my dad and lolo's. I considered myself a well-informed consumer, and having demoed one of the SR series (SR125? not one of the low-end ones), started singing its praises, calling it well-controlled, fast, and surprisingly transparent.

But I stuck with my AKGs. The Fiio broke, I junked it, decided the K550s (definitely moved on to those at this point) sounded just as good out of my smartphone, and happily stuck with that for a while. I'd gotten into fountain pens at around the time I got the K550s, and decided I was happier playing with nibs and ink. I still think so, to an extent, which explains why I'm happily twiddling my thumbs in mid-fi-landia while I'm spending absurd amounts of cash on glorified writing sticks, but one of the friend's I'd made at the local pen group was also into very nice headphones, and I got to attend a mini meet with him and some other headphone enthusiasts.

Boy that was a mistake.

So, having calibrated my ears and having made friends (whom I assumed knew their shit) I could ask for audio advice on the fly, I started shopping around for headphones again. Went for a DT880 and started looking into DACs, which I didn't really think were worth that much hype then. Yeah, I was a bit of a NWAvian too, cough cough.

Played around with some nice cans that were new to me (and even got to listen to new headphones! ) across the span of several months when I heard that someone local was selling headphones I'd been drooling over for the better part of a decade by then, if not in excess thereof, the RS1s.

They were lighter than I expected they would be; they irritated my ears when I wore them for too long; they were beautiful. It was that last point that made me determined to like how they sounded, damn the treble-sensitives and those bastards that insisted headphones needed soundstage! I used them as my daily drivers for a good couple months, and my Beyers quite literally began gathering dust. I didn't mind.

After a while, I was ready to sell the Beyers but decided to give them a celebratory farewell listen. Gently pat the dust off, plonk them on my head (sweet Jesus these are comfortable), start playing some music and ohholywhatthefuckthesesoundbetter.

Cut panicked A/B-ing (blind is impossible when one of the cans feels like velvet-clothed bosoms on my ears and the other's just grating) and subsequent discovery that despite the massive price difference the DT880s were generally superior on all but a few genres, and even those were a matter of personal preference. Borrowed a SR60i and didn't have as easy a time as I'd expected telling the difference between them and the RS1s. Bollocks, forget selling the 880s the RS1s are the ones that need a new home.

Demoed the larger Grados (not the GS2ke yet), found myself thinking that while I liked their sound they're frighteningly overpriced. As has been said in this thread, there's only so much 70s nostalgia and good looks can do for you once you decide you can't afford cans that are picky about their genres. Had I the money, I'd have kept the RS1s as a fashion statement after having them recabled and reterminated for portable use and used other cans for at-home listening. But I don't have that kind of money, and I don't listen to jazz as much as I used to.

Got the RS1s back in the mail a couple days ago. Went through a few tracks trying to get a feel for them again, had trouble deciding if the tears in my eyes (literal, not metaphorical— I'm a ball of emotion) were due to the cans' giving me an emotional "in" to certain sentimental tracks that due to their guilty-pleasure nature will remain unidentified or because my ears were no longer used to weird treble. Used to have a hard-on for Grado woodies even though I don't actually swing that way, but my enthusiasm's (among other things) deflated.

But damn does Lady Day shine on these.

 

I was one if the guys who got in on the GS2000 demo from TTVG. Very pretty. Very awful sounding. Absurd pricetag. Almost zero bass. Having owned an RS125i, RS80e, PS500e, GH1, and the PS1000, I think its the worst Grado I have heard.

The GH1 or PS500e are the only ones I wish I still had. Sentimentality of course, but I still like them.

Now I have a DIY set of GH1ish cans with Nhoord red drivers. It tops them all by a fair margin.

 

I've also got a nhoord red v1 grado diy, it's wonderful

 

lol, deleted my post cause it seemed overly harsh, sorry about that: in all honesty, im having a rough patch.

From the reports ive read about Grado, the RS2x fall in line with the Grado sound. Genre master, go from hero to zero depending on the material played. Weird cans. Massively uncomfortable and terrible cable. But yeah, when the magic hits it hits and there's no denying its treble and bass acuracy. There's some weird mid tonality but no transients veil like the hd650.
Grado are all about speed, articulate bass and probably the best overall treble representation. For some music, it strikes pure magic. For other music, its incredibly coloured and wrong. biggest head scratcher actually in my audio life. Grado kinda reminds me of Horns (you cant deny its transients advantage, but they are still a bit wild even when tamed....)

EDIT: I just compared F pads vs stock pads (bowl). The F pads seriously boost the bass, but with the soundstage detriment. I think I prefer the stock pads with Xbass bass boost at maximum: the F pads only need the Xbass at minimum to sound balanced. With the F pads, the uneven mids and treble sounds rougher as the sound becomes more forward. The bowl pads make the sound evenly bright, but at least you get some depht out of the sound. the stock pad increase the soundstage depht, comfortability and evens the mids-treble but literally removes bass. thankfully the iFi amps comes handy with the xbass boost.

 

Geekeria FTW. Best balance of lows and highs. After reading Marvey and Hands discussion of the various pads, I got Geeks and prefer them even over TTVJ Flats (std, not deluxe) on the PS500.

TTVJ deluxe are never in stock anyway and seem overpriced.

 

ok, ive added the HD650 foam that is in front of the drivers. Ive cut a circle and inserted them under the bowl pads. This calms even more the treble

They are probably even slightly more bass light then hd800: Both HD800 and RS2x needs the bass boost at max level. I think overall I prefer the RS2x now over HD800. Hard to say as ive sold the hd800 over 6 months ago.