Mean Sennheiser bastards! Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod

[Rodeodave]

Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod – mike beauchamp


Check out that guy's Sennheiser hack: He found out that the only difference between his HD 555 and someone else's HD 595 was an additional foam pad to mess with the 555's sound output. Last time I checked there was at least 50€ (about $70) difference in retail price.
Mean bastards, aren't they?

[merlin el mago]

600 & 650 share the same driver....

[nikongod]

head-4-chan now on diyaudio.

[qusp]

this is common in all areas of electronics, often you will find 2 or more models will share the same pcb with a couple of functions hobbled. it saves on development costs. so unless you want both models to cost more, probably best to just live with it. of course as diyers we can even take advantage of it; remove the foam

[miklos]

Originally Posted by Rodeodave

Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod – mike beauchamp


Check out that guy's Sennheiser hack: He found out that the only difference between his HD 555 and someone else's HD 595 was an additional foam pad to mess with the 555's sound output. Last time I checked there was at least 50€ (about $70) difference in retail price.
Mean bastards, aren't they?

How would that make them bastards?
You could complain if they would stop making headphones.

[Bonsai]

. . . this is all about product positioning and screwing every last but of cash out of a market niche as possible. Marketers do it both up and down. Easy to take a 'high end' product and sell in 'down' to earn extra cash. I have a friend that worked for a drinks company in Europe. They took a standard french Brandy, repackaged it (EXACTLY the same brandy inside) and marketed in Japan for a 100% premium. Such is the nature of marketing bastards and human vanity. BTW, the Japanese are past masters at this type of trick as well.

Nevertheless, generally Sennhieser make good h/phones, so count yourself lucky!

[kevinahcc20]

It does seem a bit wrong-headed...why not make 1 model with best features instead of 2 models/1 hobbled. Price in-between at point to maximize volume and return, save on production, packaging, inventory, distribution associated with 2 models. In the end I would expect at worst a push on revenue/profit and maybe better. It's one thing to leave out content to have a range of choices, another to add content to degrade performance!

[nikongod]

As a bit of history:
The original HD595 had 120ohm drivers. Not that anyone cares but the 120ohm versions were awesome. There were a bunch of people who thought that the 595-120ohm would dethrone the 650 as king of the hill, but the backwards numbering (595<600<650 you can tell its worse before even listening!) and lack of effort by anyone in advertising the headphone got it nowhere.

My own assumption is that the tooling to make the 120-ohm drivers got destroyed, and after that they made do with what they could get because nobody cared about the 595 anyways. It dosn't seem like much has changed - nobody cares about the 595, except that its evidence that senn is a bunch of mean bastards or something like that, so you should buy the 555....

Sennheiser (actually most headphone MFR's) has always used the same frame with different drivers for several models so thats nothing new.

If your interested in reading some reviews of the 2 impedance 595's you may be able to find them by searching several years back on head-fi.

Regarding making 2 similar things VS 1 thing:
You are assuming that dropping one item from the line would shift its sales into the other. It seldom works like that. Customers who want a "mid-priced" thing wind up buying from another brand - your high priced item is too high or they would not be looking at the mid-priced thing at all, but there are plenty of other similar quality items at a very similar price to your mid-range option elsewhere. Customers who want to pay in the low end price range might not pay the extra few dollars to make up for the lost sales (someone else makes equally cheap gear to your cheap gear, if not more so!) and then your really screwed.

When you have the opportunity to build 2 things at different pricepoints using many common parts, or at the very least common injection molds, DO IT!