back to article Motörheadphönes ears-in review

It’s tempting to see the new line of Motörhead phones - sorry, phönes - as just another entry in the growing list of celebrity branded audio gear triggered by the rise of Dr Dre’s Beats line. And you can’t blame Lemmy and co. for telling their roadies to shove their amps and speaker stacks onto this particular bandwagon. In El …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    OK, and what do the earphones sound like??????

    1. The Flying Dutchman
      Happy

      Re: what do the earphones sound like?

      Being familiar with Lemmy's stage monitor setup, I bet they'll be pretty loud, probably deafeningly so...

      1. Huw D
        Pint

        Re: what do the earphones sound like?

        Yes, I've had the pleasure of Lemmy's monitor mix as well. Trapped between that and Murder One.

    2. Whitter
      Facepalm

      Ear phones...

      Did you mean ear plugs? The chaps pictured at the end but never mentioned.

      I wondered that too.

      1. Toxteth O'Gravy
        Thumb Down

        Re: Ear phones...

        Why? Who'd touch those hideously uncomfortable in-ear things? Bloody awful the lot of them.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What

      What's with the flamin umlauts over the 'o' s?

      1. Allan George Dyer
        Pirate

        Re: What

        It's the Metal Umlaut. Where have you been? See:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What

        dönut

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Definately a born again middle aged rocker, just look at the music choices.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Unfortunately they are a heavy rock compromise, now with Health and Safety in charge they will not result in hearing loss!

  2. Anton Channing
    Devil

    How long will it now be...

    ...before Iron Maiden release their 'Eddie the Edphones', and the Lars and co release their 'MetalliCans'...

    1. Valerion
      Happy

      Re: How long will it now be...

      Genius! I would soooo buy a pair of Edphones!

      I'll stick with my Marshall Minors for now though. Sound great, look great and are also super-cool :)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How long will it now be...

      "Lars and co release their 'MetalliCans'..."

      Apparently those ones make a horrible whining noise when you play MP3s you got from Napster in 1999.

      Oh, wait.... no, the whining noise is apparently just a pre-recorded lecture from Lars Ulrich on the evils of piracy. (^_^)

  3. Spiracle

    Congratulations for avoiding the obvious 'IronFist/velvet glove' refererence there. I just hope that their next round of product includes 'Orgasmatron' or 'Deaf Forever' lines.

    1. Magnus_Pym

      Forget Orgasmatrom

      I'm waiting for the Lemmy themed orgon accumulator. On second thoughts, scratch that.

  4. Justin Stringfellow
    Megaphone

    who knows....

    Any true motorhead fan can't hear that much :)

    I had tinitus for a week after my first motorhead gig back in the 80s - they were easily the loudest band I've heard.

    That is all.

    1. Laurie
      Pint

      Re: who knows....

      I second that.

      I "heard" them in Guildford Civic Centre circa 1990. It was nothing but white noise until I went to the toilets which were were set in a sort of bunker underneath the building. Happily, a good 30 foot or so of concrete between me and the band improved the sound quality to the extent that I could make out which track they were playing.

      I had tinnitus for days.

      1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: who knows....

        Ah, the Guildford Civic Hall. Scene of many a great gig, including my first ever, Wishbone Ash in about 1980/81. I'm not sure I ever saw Motorhead there, though. Excellent in the Hammersmith Odeon, all through the '80s, I think I saw them 7 or 8 times, it was a great decade. Still good value even now, I saw them with Joan Jett and Alice Cooper in Bournemouth a couple of years back.

        GJC

        1. h4rm0ny

          Re: who knows....

          Ah yes, I remember when Motörhead played Guildford Civic Hall. I enjoyed that one.

          Mind you, I was in Aldershot at the time.

        2. MrT

          Time has been kinder...

          ... to Joan though. I remember trying to buy one of her later albums (Up your alley) in HMV Leeds. The manager said they had a few in the back but for some reason they always lost the album covers from the shelves...

          Mind you, it was about the same time that Kerrang was into printing large-format multi-issue posters of various singers - I have, erm, vivid memories of a three-issue full-size poster of Lita Ford standing in a swimming pool... ... ... ... 8-P ... I have absolutely no recollection of Lemmy getting the same treatment ;-) All I do remember is that it was probably a bad idea to put band patches and badges on a red Ferrari body-warmer style jacket instead of the obligatory denim item. Too many cig burns saw that one off :-D

          1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge

            Re: Time has been kinder...

            To be fair, Lemmy has never been the most handsome of creatures, even when he was younger.

            GJC

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: who knows....

      I've got tinnutus, but I can't entirely blame Motörhead for that (although they are the second loudest band I've heard after My Bloody Valentine). The real blame has to go to the berk at college who decided to fire a handgun into the air just a few centimetres from my ear. Couldn't hear anything but a high pitched whistle for several days, then it faded but never went away. Never did work out why someone felt the need to wander round with a loaded starter pistol in his jacket ...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: who knows....

      I had a ringing in my ears after seeing them at West Runton pavillion a long time ago, though it was a cold that gave me tinnitus on one side a couple of years ago. The set went by in a bit of noisy blur.

      Might still have Philthy's signature on a fag packet (not mine) somewhere....

  5. Death_Ninja

    These sound like a cool thing....

    ....but neither the article nor the manufacturers website nor even google suggests where you can buy them :-/

  6. TheRealRoland
    Happy

    i do like this typo though...

    >>With a metal >meddley< loudly throbbing from the small venue’s big speakers

    When talking about how the velvet would shield the ears more so than leather or plastic.

  7. CADmonkey
    Mushroom

    I usually hate celebrity endorsed products, but....

    want!

    but where?

  8. Colin Miller
    Joke

    Heavy metal umlaut

    Isn't that þhöñës?

    1. Ru
      Headmaster

      Re: Heavy metal umlaut

      Umlauts ain't tildes. Just ask Spın̈al Tap.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Heavy metal umlaut

      a thorn (or is it "eth") and a tilde!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Heavy metal umlaut

        That's a thorn. In Old English it was either voiced or unvoiced but in Icelandic where it's still used it's only unvoiced and they use eth (also spell edh, which is how I remember it as the voiced one), which is just a D or curvy d with a line through it.

        So, either it'd be affect the pronunication or we'd end up with a Metal Thorn.

        And the tilde in a metal name would just be silly. Although, given Armored Saint's last album maybe they could start using it.

  9. TeeCee Gold badge
    WTF?

    Other brands.

    ".....but these ‘phones don’t necessarily deliver the best audio experience for folk who like tunes."

    That explains something I did wonder at. Not too long ago I bought a pair of rather nice sounding Sennheisers. When I bought them I also tried a humungously expensive pair of "beats audio" objects (and quite a lot of other stuff too).

    Without a doubt the most overpriced crap I have ever listened to. I had to go into the really cheap shit to find anything that sounded worse. Like a headphone version of a 1980s boom box with the graphic equalizer set to the de rigeur "all the way up at both ends".

    Makes me wonder why more producers don't commit suicide, knowing that their carefully worked mix is going to be fed through something like that.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Other brands.

      Was interesting that these are not cheap.

      I also have Sennheisers.

      Flat tonal response is best.

      Sounds like these are trying for flat

      1. Fibbles

        Re: Other brands.

        As MJI said. You can always adjust to taste with the EQ if you're playing something with a drum machine and need more low end than usual. Buying a set of cans optimized for one genre of music seems a bit pointless.

  10. handle

    Bull

    "rap-oriented ‘phones focus focus on bass and vocals but do little or no justice to the mid-range where guitars live."

    Except vocals live in the mid-range too.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Bull

      corrected to

      "crap-oriented ‘phones focus focus on bass and vocals but do little or no justice to the mid-range where guitars live."

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bull

      Except vocals live in the mid-range too.

      Apart for the vocals delivered by that high pitched plonker in Cypress Hill.

  11. LinkOfHyrule
    Paris Hilton

    More Ace of Bass than Ace of Spades if you ask me!

    If the music has been properly produced and mixed there's no need for a special type of headphone for certain genres of music as the music has already been eqed and mixed to sound good on any average loudspeaker thingy surely? - actually I slightly get the bass thing for dance and rap, but specialist metal headphones? I thought you were supposed to listen to that stuff loud in a dark room dripping with sweat not on your tod sat in an armchair or on the bus!

    The only celebrity endorsed headphones I ever want are the Paris ones - apparently they need to be sterilised before use or you could catch ear herpes off them! Or so I'm told!

  12. armyknife

    Bass Chord FTW

    I thought the signature element of Motorhead's classic sound is the bass playing of Lemmy, so why do these headphones boost the guitar/'metal sound' ?

    Wouldn't it make more sense to have whatever quality near 'neutral' sounding speakers/headphones you can afford and then crank the volume up to whatever you're comfortable with and/or feel reproduces that Motorhead sound the best ?

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Bass Chord FTW

      No it is their wall of loudness.

      I get the feeling someone was fed up of bass heavy stuff and wanted a decent sound, then thought time to market it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bass Chord FTW

      I thought the signature element of Motorhead's classic sound is the bass playing of Lemmy, so why do these headphones boost the guitar/'metal sound' ?

      Because Lemmy plays bass like it's a lead guitar, with loads of double stops (root and fifth - basically a power chord minus the root an octave up). He also uses a highly unusual setting on his amps - bass and treble set to zero, middle and input gain set to max.

  13. Dapprman
    Joke

    Killed by Deaf !!!

    Sorry, couldn't resist it ....

    1. Irongut

      Stone Deaf Forever!

      me neither

      1. Colin Wright

        Re: Stone Deaf Forever!

        Once Deaf joke was OK, but yours was just Overkill.

  14. Tom 7

    Best ever headphones I heard

    were some electrostatics I made. Never did find a decent cable that would cope with 1kV AND frenetic air guitar - or kettle drumming on occasion.

    Are there any decent hi-fi shops anywhere these days - everywhere I go seems to be limited to a brand or two - no chance of real comparisons.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Ré comment about earPHONES being uncomfortable (as that is the correct name for in ear `phones although they are also known as IEDs - Inner Ear Devices), the comfort often comes down to the fit of the tips/sleeves, if the ones supplied are no good then try some 3rd party jobs.

    I have a pair of SoundMagic earphones; the 4 different sets of rubber tips supplied were terrible for my ears, but once I had experimented with a few different 3rd party tips I found some that were comfortable enough to wear all night - something I DO regularly - I have sleep problems due to medical issues and find Buddhist chanting very relaxing.

    Bass response from these things is very dependant on good positioning, but get it right, with the right tip, and the bass is capable of going very deep while remaining controlled and musical. My PL30's cost me £16 and sound far superior to a top brand name pair I have that cost £120.

  16. MJI Silver badge

    Heavy rock fans go for quality I noticed.

    We always seem to have a decent hifi setup, you need it with heavy rock, I don't know any fans for example who like MP3, a lot still like vinyl, as well as CD.

    I have a Deep Purple SACD.

    last CD I bought was Def Leppards most recent.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Still no word on where to buy these

    I even asked the marketing department for these and they didn't reply.

    If I was the person behind these I'd be showing my Iron Fist to the marketing lady in a way that isn't suitable for minors.

  18. Duffy Moon
    Devil

    For heavy rock, many headphone aficionados go for the upfront sound of Grado headphones. Drawbacks are: they're uncomfortable and aren't built too well. They're also open (not so good for mobile use).

    For robust, good-value mobile headphones, I would strongly recommend Sennheiser HD-25-1 II. They are used by pros, have a steel cable and everything is easily replaceable. Oh yes, they sound great too. They look pretty bland, so you won't worry about some oik stealing them off your head.

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