Which piece of gear have you owned the longest?

ROFL

 

Sennheiser HD-25 - I dread to think how many years I have owned them.. I've replaced a couple of parts, but they're still the same basic headphones, and still going strong. They've been used for DJing, commuting, location sound work in underground boiler rooms in the dead of night, and long bouts of video gaming- and they still sound surprisingly nice, are comfy and isolate surprisingly well. I have bought more pairs with other peoples' money to leave at work so mine can stay at home, but prefer to have a pair on hand, come what may.

A brilliant bit of kit, and worth every penny.

Edit:

..and you can wear them with a head torch and glasses, without problems. Score!

 

My JH13s turn(ed?) 7 this month. They've been good enough to me that I've had no practical interest in all of the newfangled IEMs coming out every year or two. JH customer service has also been exceptional for me, including one minor servicing gratis despite them being well out of warranty.

I spent a good 3-4 years away from the hobby listening to little else (until 2013, when I went Stax).

 

Deleted for apathy.

 

I'm sure this is sacrilege, but the headphones I've had the longest are the Bose AE2 (Around-Ear 2). I use them for podcasts, Youtube videos and such simply because they are very comfortable. I've gone through various Senn open phones for my "good headphones" since I owned the Bose. Currently on an HD580 headband with HD650 drivers.

My overall oldest audio gear is a PSB Subsonic 6 subwoofer. I've bought better ones since then, but it has a bit of cosmetic damage so I don't think it's worth selling for what little I'll get for it. I keep it in case I ever have to sell the others, or if I can ever make room for a multi-sub setup.

 

I came across something older than the preamp that I posted earlier. My second pair of headphones ever.

Sennheiser HD414 - Mine had the disintegrating blue pads. They were pale gray rather than the white in this image. I don't have the box anymore, but when I saw this image it brought back memories of getting these and opening the box up for the first time. I remember liking these. Although that was in comparison to my Koss Pro 4A, which I didn't care for. I remember the Koss becoming uncomfortable before a LP side would finish while these were pretty comfortable.



I see that Sennheiser still sells foam pads for these. They dropped the blue pads and switched to yellow. If I can get a signal out of both speakers, I am going to get some new pads and see what they sound like. Impressive that Sennheiser still sells pads for headphones that I bought over forty years ago.

 

Even by Sennheiser's standards of scrupulous spares availability, that's hilarious.On some level it's awfully reassuring when you're considering spending a lot of money on headphones, mind..

 

Ah nice, and a little bit of trivia...those HD414 pads work well (reversed) when used instead of Grado bowl pads. My nice woody Grados did look a bit weird with yellow pads though .

Oh, and the yellow ones disintegrate as well!

 

Yeah. I wonder if it has anything to do with Sennheiser being a privately owned rather than a publicly traded company. It puts them in the position to do what they want rather than having to squeeze every last penny of profit out of business decisions.

We wince when paying the rather high price for genuine Sennheiser earpads for HD6X0/580, but how would we feel if they were simply not available?

 

Personally, I don't wince- I have heard too many tales of woe from people who bought third party pads. I replaced the pads on my HD25 recently, too- and was really glad to have the no-brainer option of genuine pads that would do the job properly.

For all their faults, Sennheiser's parts policy gives me a minor case of the warm and fuzzies whenever I need it.

 

Actually, I don't wince either. It just sounded better to post "We wince" rather than "Some of you guys wince" or something like that.