Today I bring you a guest post from the fabulous Steve! Visit him on his own blog as well. You’ll like him! –ProductWhore
Now that it’s been a week and half since I was laid off from my $65,000 a year corporate job, and five days since I worked as an unpaid production whelp on a short film in Detroit, I feel it is finally time to start writing. Specifically writing about headphones of course. Trying to capture everything that’s happened in the last few months would be on par with trying to solve a Rubik’s cube after several shots of vodka, but headphones? Yes I can deal with that.
The quest for new headphones started when I figured out after a mere eleven months how to work my MP3 player. Note to self – loading MP3 player with 180000 gigabyte files that don’t even contain music data will make your device a little sluggish. That minor glitch corrected I plugged in my headphones and started jamming. I bopped along till I caught site of myself in the mirror. The giant mounds of foam perched on my ears made me look like a complete dork. Um…which is really hard to do.
They were also too noisy to wear in public, especially if I plan on doing any writing at the library. It was clear I would need to acquire headphones of the earbud variety. My experience with earbuds up this point has not been good. I had yet to have a pair fit comfortably and the sound quality has been poor. All tin and no thump. So I asked Best Buy lady what was the most comfortable, best sounding earbuds I could buy. Her response was unexpectedly passionate.
“Skullcandy!!!” she said.
She told me how her teenage daughter had tried a gazillion headphones before discovering Skullcandy and will now use nothing else. She claimed that “the guy that worked for Bose” left the company to form Skullcandy and developed $20 earbuds that outperform their $100 Bose counterparts. I would later determine after several seconds on Wikipedia that Skullcandy was formed by snowboarding megamogul Rick Alden, who as far as I can tell has never set foot in Bose. That’s not to say he didn’t hire someone who did though and besides, it’s a cool Stick It To The Man story.
The other distinguishing feature of the Skullcandy earbuds is that they come with multiple ear fittings. The rubber fittings come in small, medium and large, and snap on easily. I sampled all three. The large would not squeeze in and the small felt too loose, but the default medium size worked great, fitting comfortably but securely.
But how would it sound? I pressed play on my MP3 player, expecting the tinny noise I was used to with small headphones. “I LOOVE YOUUU!!!” belted out Nickelback. Far from tinny, Chad Kroeger’s voice was deep and soulful and totally made me want to love him back were it not for him being a dude. I actually worried that such a powerful sound would be heard by others. Not easy to test when you are alone, but when I lightly pressed one earbud to the palm of my hand, the music disappeared completely. I am fairly confident the same thing happens when I put them in my ear, giving me and Chad complete privacy. Which is really for the best.
I am therefore happy to report that Skullcandy lived up to Best Buy lady’s hype. They feel great, sound great, and won’t cheese off any bystanders at the library. More importantly they make me look cool. Well cool in a no mounds of black foam sticking on my ears kind of way at least. Now if only I can resist singing along to the latest sultry Nickelback ballad, I will be all set.
Where to buy: There is a store locater on the skullcandy website, and a pretty good selection of products available online through amazon.com.
Skullcandy website
skullcandy products on amazon.com
