welp. a coupla you guys know i've been mixing a ton o' bass music lately. y'know what that done did? it blew up my grados!

no shit.. my trusty grado sr80's.. the right channel started to grattle. welp. it finally went FFRRTSSXZZZZZTT! blew right the fuck up.

not ENTIRELY a surprise.. i've been beating on these things since like 1996.

so i started looking for replacements. when i DID, i looked at the grado website, and there's a proviso that said 'if you buy yours from some amazon vendors-- they're not all certified grado dealers, and if you pick the wrong one, we won't warranty 'em'. pretty explicitly. so i emailed grado.

they told me, well.. you can buy new ones from xy and z dealers-- but you can also have your out of warranty cans fixed. Just fill out this handy dandy attached form, and send it to us, and we'll mail them back!

how much?

THIRTY BUX.

so thinking, this is WAY too good to be true.. i mailed 'em back. 'do you replace BOTH drivers for 30 bux?!'.. answer) of course, stupid. and they returned the email within an HOUR. no kidding.

so i sent mine aged cans back to brooklyn. i talked to a super sweet older lady who took my credit card info. got it all squared away. i figured it'd take a month. NOPE. a WEEK to the day later. they turned up.

now-- like i said, these cans were worn. i've replaced the jack 3 separate times. there's been 4 sets of earpads on them. the silk on the cans was pretty tatty. i got 'em back-- TOTALLY spiffed up, new silk, and i didn't even ask for it-- but a brand new upgraded jack AND cables WITH the new drivers.

seriously-- if you are thinking of having open ear mixing cans.. i CAN'T even recommend these guys enough. i wrote them a note telling them they were the best in the world, and they even responded with a total 'aw shucks'... fucking righteous company.

That is fucking awesome, actually.

If I ran a company, that is exactly how I would run it. The customer is significantly more important than my precious time.

see.. now, if the world had a 'justice fund', i think most guys on this board i'd set up to run companies i'd patronize anyhow. but i have a sneaking suspicion that john grado'd hang out here if he were a guitar nerd...

OH-- and to further it? about 4 years ago, i bought a seriously high dolla (well.. to me) grado phono cart. after a year.. one channel pooped out. i called 'em? they asked for my address before i got any information. this seemed outa protocol. i said 'wait.. i haven't sent your cartridge back yet.. don't you want to look at it to figure out what happened?' they said 'no.. it doesn't matter, we'll mail this one out today so you HAVE one- we'll fix that one when it comes back.'

:

i wish they made MORE stuff so i could save up and buy everything... i wish they made cars..

I was nearly sold on getting AKGs but that customer service experience just might have switch me into buying Grados....

During my travels looking for a set of cans, I saw how well Grado prices their SR stuff considering the sound (tried them at an audiophile store, they sounded as good as the Senns and Shures and such that are hundreds more expensive). And I decided they are probably the ones I'd buy.

You have strengthened my conviction.

To those considering purchasing them- they sound really awesome, too. They've become my go-to for mixing. Definitely a very different sound than the Sennheisers. (And I've spent a good amount of time with AKG K240s, too, and prefer the Grados.)

It's good to know their service is glorious, too.

I saw a guy on the train with SR80s, and I was like . Then I saw that he had them on backwards, and I was like.