Buying used headphones
I sold about 50 over a year and a half before the major bicycle manufacturers got wise and started offering the cooler (and less costly for them) rides at better prices.
All this led to my statement that one should never buy new outdoor gear of any kind in Boulder. So many people, I explained, have plenty of cash but little time to perfect the myriad activities you get into when you move here. Invariably, barely-used, high quality stuff is cycled through a network of second hand gear stores.
Second hand resale stores run the gamut in terms of quality and reliability. The gear store I like the most in Boulder carries that distinction because its offerings are curated, and all of the gear is tested. The last thing you want is to discover a tiny leak in your new sleeping pad at midnight as you’re tossing and turning on rocks.
My photographer grandmother always cautioned me to not buy second hand film camera lenses for the Leica she gave me, because she said a reseller could not really know the quality of the glue holding the lenses and whether any had been left in a hot car or out in the sun, even once.
However, she said, if you get the sense that the seller has shot film through it, and could tell it was good and could check it out thoroughly in use, you could trust that a lot more.
One audio product like that for me is headphones. Headphones are such a personal device like a camera that they can see a lot of travel, a lot of environments and different climates. Good headphones can be delicate and contain complex engineering. Heads can sweat, especially with a tube amp in the mix.
Because we at TMR are audio fanatics of the highest caliber, we go to extra length to clean and inspect headphones. Occasionally we will take personal offense at a tiny blemish — we care about this as much as any of you, and maybe a little more!
We have at the time of this writing, several pairs of the Audeze LCD-XC (my favorite headphone to test) being processed and almost in stock, and each is in incredible condition. I know, because I gluttonously tested all of them! We also have the incredible LCD-X open back version currently in stock on the website. I just love the speed and accuracy with this line of headphones from Audeze, and I’m probably the 1000th audio writer to declare that.
These offer some of the best sound money can buy, and specifically the LCD-XC fill a role that has been wanting for a solution for so long — accurate, real sound for studio engineers WITH sound isolation built in. This is a topic for another post, because I could quickly put you to sleep with talk of stapedius reflex, bad mixing environments, infinite baffles, Auratones, and all kinds of stuff.
But here we have some of the world’s best offerings at a lower price than you can ever find new. And each of these was meticulously inspected by a caring audiophile. If TMR doesn’t offer the best reason to step up to the high end of headphones, I think no one does.
Take the leap. Chances are, I personally tested, cleaned and briefly fell in love with the piece of gear that is about to steal your heart too.
Yesterday I was regaling the TMR guys about my days in Boulder building bikes and selling them on Craigslist. I had chanced upon a new movement toward cycling minimalism — the recent “fixie” and single speed revolution — and found myself collecting used frames and building new, desirable rides from old and forgotten bicycles.
I sold about 50 over a year and a half before the major bicycle manufacturers got wise and started offering the cooler (and less costly for them) rides at better prices.
All this led to my statement that one should never buy new outdoor gear of any kind in Boulder. So many people, I explained, have plenty of cash but little time to perfect the myriad activities you get into when you move here. Invariably, barely-used, high quality stuff is cycled through a network of second hand gear stores.
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