Head Phone Question

eagle670
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 11:31 am

Does anyone have any suggestions as to a good set of headphones that I can use with my guitar amp? There are way to many choices out there and I am not sure if there needs to be a certain type that you have to use with an amp.

Kevin


BigBear
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 1:31 pm

Kevin- you can spend a whole pile of dough on good headphones with the sky the limit! But I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD 280's and I absloutely love them! They are closed-ear, light and seem to be very accurate. I actually bought them to listen to TG videos at night so I wouldn't wake up my wife!

I bought them off of eBay for around $65 and I couldn't be happier! They also got very good ratings on Amazon. They will easily do what you are looking for. You could spend more but why?

Good luck buddy!

Rick


eagle670
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 1:42 pm

Thanks Rick! I actually saw a reference to those when I was searching the net about this subject. Do you use those with your Les Paul?


tovo
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 1:44 pm

Kevin,

I have a set of Bose noise cancelling headphones. More expensive than the ones Bear mentioned but real nice and comfortable I can recommend them.

Depends what you want to spend of course.


RicksPick
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 2:26 pm

Hi Kevin
Hi All

Bit of info : something I didn't know, found this out looking into amps and this little tit bit was in the review

Remember to turn volume to Zero before plugging in headhones.
No reason why but I guess not to blow them
Any one head of this???

RicksPick


wiley
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 3:49 pm



BigBear
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 4:03 pm

eagle670 wrote:
Thanks Rick! I actually saw a reference to those when I was searching the net about this subject. Do you use those with your Les Paul?
Kevin- I use them with everything! I even use them with my iPod! They are great phones for the price! :cheer:


BigBear
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 4:07 pm

wiley wrote:
Rick,

I'm guessing you plan on using the cans as a practice tool, and as such it's probably not a big deal using the headphone jack. It's always good practice to either turn the volume to zero when disconnecting or connecting anything to an amp. Even turning the power off is good practice. To explain the reasoning a bit, most built-in type headphone jacks are tied in with the 'master' volume. You plug them in, the speaker circuit is defeated and re-directed to the cans. Without certain circuitry in place, which seldom is on most amps, there will be that loud 'pop' as you do so.

There is a way to go around this, for around $30us and if your amp has either a 'direct' or 'line' out jack. These jacks are 'in line' with the master circuitry and are intended to be used to either tie in to a larger system or the like. You can add something like a Behringer Micromon MA400 headphone amplifier ($22us from MF) and use the cans as a sort of 'personal monitor' while the speaker stays in play. Of course, if you do not want the speaker live, you just turn the master volume to zero. Honestly, this is a lot better than plugging the cans into the on-board jack as it creates an entirely separate 'circuit' and doesn't rely on the normal amp circuitry to power the headphones. Better sound quality, in my probably useless opinion.

As for the cans themselves, really like everyone else has said, depends on the desire for yourself towards sound quality and your pocketbook (and the application). I even go a bit lower than Bear, I use Sennheiser HD 201s ($25us @ MF). For around $120us the Sennheiser HD280 Silver ( a bit different and higher rated than the HD280's ($100us) Bear is talking about) are a bargain in this price range.

There are also several models (around $230us and up) of 'wireless' cans available.

I should mention that I have the Silvers, too. I didn't realize they were differnt than the regular HD 280's! Thanks, I learned something today! lol! :cheer:


haoli25
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Mon Oct 25, 2010 7:24 pm

I know a little about those things, Kevin.

Find out what the impedance of the headphone jack on your guitar amp is. It should be in the Tech Data that came with your amp. Match the impedance of your new headphones with the impedance of your amp and they will sound fine.

Many headphone jacks are 150 ohms, others may be 600 ohm. The impedance of the Sennheiser 280's that were mentioned is 64 ohms. Great for an iPod, not so great for anything else.



Bill


eagle670
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Tue Oct 26, 2010 8:19 am

Thanks guy's, great information. I had an idea that the impedance had an effect on the sound quality of the headphones, I will check out what my jack is rated. But I have to tell you that I really like Wiley's idea of using the line out jack and a headphone amp. This will give you both options to use the amp speaker and headphones at the same time or shut the speaker off and just use the headphones.

Thanks again

Kevin


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