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That's a shame for the RS-1, because the RS-1 sounds like a completely different animal than the GS-1000. Absolutely not the same kind of bass or soundstage, and those bagel pads won't make it sound good, but it's the highest John Grado with the intimate forward sound still, which makes it worth keeping.

By the way, any word on the packaging? There's no way that can is going to fit in the current pizza boxes.

If anything, I think it would drive the market a bit for a run on old HP-1000 cans just because some folks might be interested in owning "The Best of Joe" and "The Best of John" and retiring from Grado after that, hehe. They are so different in signature that I don't think the new can will deflate the HP series on the used market in any way. And personally, I would love to own the GS-1000, get my HP2 in working order, and call it a day.

Grado GS-1000 with flats. Utter Bass Destruction.

Very interesting that it has "1000" at the end of it, like the HP-1000. I guess John is stepping up to Joe and saying "you want ultimate? Well here's MY ultimate!" Good for him!

One of the sales guys at the NYC Qualia Store was trying to beef up his resume in front of us by saying he used to work the floor at Magnolia. We were not impressed.

The good news is that those bagels will definitely fit the HP2. The bad news is that I have a feeling that any bass left would go out the door - the HP2 isn't the bassiest can, and these pads bring your ears WAY out from the driver.

if the Mets still had Jae Seo, I'd still go to games. as it was, the last game i went to was with Pedro on the mound for the Mets versus the Astros, and he generated 2 runs with his bat to help himself to a 5-1 masterpiece. Electric.

All you need to know is that Yikes came, cleaned up on the door prizes, implied I was deceptively short, and left.

no word on how the pricing will affect the rest of the lineup. i'm guessing prices for other cans won't change, because none are currently near the 1K mark and they are comfy in their own price niche still. the new pads still touch HUGE earlobes a bit, but for the most part the pads are big enough to actually rest on your head, not your ears, so your lobes actually don't touch anything but air. so yes the pads are circumaural in structure, but the foam is still the open airy supraaural type.

I heard them briefly on saturday and as long as i wanted on sunday (since he brought two that day) - we even had time to do some pad swapping. To answer the question above, there is no doubt that this is a new driver, or at least different than the RS-1 by far. Put it this way - with flats, the RS-1 still can't do bass like the PS-1, even if the PS-1 has bowls on. The new grado can with flats has no problem doing so, and in fact with the monster $50 pads which probably bring the ear way off the driver, the bass still gets to RS-1 levels. I actually think the bowl pads will be perfect with the new can, because flats, while bringing that PS-1 bass, muddies up the mids. The "bagel" pads clean those mids up and tighten the bass (still get that extension that is lower than RS-1 tho) but you lose a crucial Grado selling point - the forward nature of the soudstage. Yeah, it's almost sennheiser-like because you are now in the audience. I have a feeling that either zeta flat cpads or bowl pads will be the right mix for me with the drivers on this new can - i look forward to manhandling this new production model in the future.

yep, folks know i'm not a big fan of the PS-1, but i really enjoyed my time with it on sunday!

hello! you can finally post some more intriguing photos of some of your more attractive female associates.

I had a chance to hear this amp at the sunday smaller meet. The balanced HD650s seemed like it had all the veil ripped out as much as possible, but what was left was maybe too revealed, as I felt it was a bit thin, like there was no heft to the notes right behind all that exposed detail on the first layer. Plus, that beefy bass (and sometimes muddy) was maybe too tight and cleaned up. It was almost like the HD650 was trying to become an AKG. But the balanced PS-1 in this amp was a big hit. PS-1s of course bring the bass, but this amp seemed voiced perfectly to take advantage of it and really integrate all the other freqs in a coherent layer with that big bass. Heft, impact, aggression, detail, not harsh, and the highs were no longer squirrely like I always felt the PS-1s to be - it was linear and smooth. Honestly, this is the best I ever heard the PS-1, and that includes hearing an unbalanced PS-1 through the epic Maestrobated Melos.

Hello, I had the chance to hear it, and it actually made me enjoy the balanced HD650, no joke. Even more so than the balanced HD650 from the RSA B-52 (although the PS-1 was the big winner in that amp - BASS.) Maybe it's just my leanings toward tube hybrids, but this thing really hit the spot for me in terms of tube warmth and smoothness weight behind notes and solid state impact and speed. I noticed the unbalanced headphone jack there too, but I didn't have my HP-2s on me to give it a spin. Uh, it sounds better than my Melos, at least in meet conditions. I think Rudi has a nice flagship amp on his hands, based purely on sound (i'm a dunce when it comes to DIY/engineering as you know!)

MINIMUM two. So you can at least go back and forth and stave off boredom for much longer. If you are a one trick pony, no matter how good the rig, eventually you'll wonder 1)How good yours really is, and 2)How good others are. With 2 rigs I realized both rigs are darn good, and each brings its own thing to the table - therefore, I'm happy with them instead of spending more cash to get "better." This doesn't count portable rigs, which i think are fine to just have one to float your boat as a necessity of life more than anything else.

smoky burnouts. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/C34026ED-F6B4-4631-BE72-4B92C29802F6.htm

Down again argh.

Hell no you guys didn't start this thread after I dropped cash on a Cardas Neutral Reference .5 IC to go 'tween my Melos and my DAC-ah! I refuse to be paranoid about impedance and resistors and all those technical things - let me just throw money at the problem and sing "lalala" to myself!

I use all my vibrational stuff just to get clearance on units lol - the Tower of Power is stacked pretty high, so right now the PC is on Isoblocks just so the 1m optical cable can reach up to the DAC. Also, the Melos is up on Vibracones so it can blow off heat away from the Marantz, but to make the .5 ICs reach to the DAC, I put Vibrapods under the DAC. Now everything is perfectly lifted - and hey, if the isolation helps SQ, so be it. BTW, brass cones under my bookshelf speakers have NOTICEABLE improvement for me - before, the speaker was sitting on my hollow desk and the bass would vibrate through the top of the desk and make nasty chambery bassy echoes. With the cones, nary a vibration on the table, and that bass is tight and impactful - someone even called my Wharfedales "Grado-like" at a minimeet, good stuff. Thanks, brass cones!

Yep I'm using a HTS3500 MKII right now too, and although it didn't get rid of my Melos' Toroidal Transformer hum, it doesn't seem to have hurt anything, and the SQ hasn't gone down, so why not have it in there, eh?

I'm hearin' that these cables are going to pop up at the National Meet - some are being given away as door prizes too! So I'll definitely give them a listen-to. However, the meet is probably going to be LOUD so a comparo might have to wait until we all leave for a break or something and we bring some portable rigs out to a quieter spot.

heck yeah we do. bring on the collections!

head-fi is down again. argh.

i have no idea if it's true that the ipod radio remote for the 5G has its own DAC or not, but so far, going from a stock 5G to that remote to an amp to my cans is the best sounding portable rig i've heard so far, no joke. folks at a minimeet we had here thought the same, ranging from "dunno if it's a resistor, caps, dac or what but it doesn't sound WORSE" to "damn that's nice"