Headphones

As must be obvious, no self respecting, pavement observing, music headed, audiophile, would be complete without a pair of huge anti social headphones. until a few months ago i was the proud owner of a pair of skullcandy GI's the (black with camo headband image here), however even though the GI's offered amazing comfort and killer frequecy resopnce, (using them for the first time after woolies worth it headphones, was awesome, like hearing all my songs for the first time(audiophilia begins)), they were as brittle as glass babies, and broke after only a few months of (ver frequent, if not constant) usage, and at £50 a pair (near enough 100 USD) I would have thought that they would put up a little more of a fight against wear and tear, It wasnt even as though I was throwing them around, I was super carefull, but it appears the construction of them wasent designed for them to be put over the head by holding the cups, a major design flaw as this is the way most people would put on headphones of this typel. To begin with the cups themselfs fell out of the rotational holders, a problem which was relaticely easy to fix but was irritating and resulted in a weird rattling sound if your head was shaken while wearing them, (making headbanging unenjoyable) a little while after this the extendable arms attatched to the cups snapped, breaking the wire ( I maintain that these arms and the wires within them were too thin and not strenghthened enough), in short say no to skullcandys (or at the very least the GI's) having said that I am very fond of the new double agents (mainly due to the giant cups, image here) they look more robust,  and are selling for £50 (100 USD) same as the GI's so who knows.  However in the absence of by beloved GIs I bought a pair of vivanco SR200's, basically becasue they looked a bit like the skullcandys and I wanted to feel better, but they are surprisingly good, good responce and comfortable fit, I have owned them now for far longer than the GI's and they show no signs of wear,  (they're even less discoloured than the skullcandys) and best of all they only cost £17 (34 USD) so the lesson is never underestimate the small lesser known brands of headphones, you may just be surprised, give your local smal time electronics store a visit, (chances are a fellow audio phile will be hiding in there either as a patron or behind the counter, and you can make a new friend)

..Wade