OK, and what do the earphones sound like??????
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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Monday 8th October 2012 10:00 GMT 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. (^_^)
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Friday 5th October 2012 14:28 GMT Laurie
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.
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Friday 5th October 2012 21:07 GMT Geoff Campbell
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
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Saturday 6th October 2012 07:40 GMT 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
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Friday 5th October 2012 15:58 GMT 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 ...
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Friday 5th October 2012 19:16 GMT 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....
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Sunday 7th October 2012 16:43 GMT 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.
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Friday 5th October 2012 14:03 GMT TeeCee
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.
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Friday 5th October 2012 14:38 GMT LinkOfHyrule
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!
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Friday 5th October 2012 14:55 GMT 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 ?
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Friday 5th October 2012 16:04 GMT 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.
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Friday 5th October 2012 19:10 GMT 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.
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Saturday 6th October 2012 08:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
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.
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Monday 8th October 2012 19:11 GMT Duffy Moon
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.