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I bought these a few years ago on impulse without listening to them first. I had owned several pairs of Sennheiser phones in the past, and I figured if I didn't like the way they sounded I would give them to my twelve year old as "gaming" headphones.

When they arrived, I was pleasantly surprized. They looked great, not as high quality looking as my buddy's 650s but for what I paid - about $30 - I thought had gotten a real "steal". They felt great when I put them on - surprisingly light for full sized cans - and snug but not at all uncomfortable. Then I plugged them in. I couldn't have been more surprized; they sounded absolutely terrible! Not just mediocre, I'm talking really, really bad. No detail whatsoever, resonant mids and bass, no deep bass, just bad.

I noticed one channel would go out if I moved the cord a certain way, so I ordered a new cord from Sennheiser in New Jersey. The new cord fixed the cutting out problem but they still sounded the same - horrible. I tried removing the foam that covers the drivers, but that didn't help much at all. I found a web site that had instructions for modding the HD-500's. The mod was to remove a 1.5 inch by 1.5 inch piece from the earcup with a Dremel tool, which was supposed to eliminate the nasty resonant quality of the mids and bass. In desperation, I tried it but it did almost nothing to change the sound. There must be something fundamentally wrong with design of the actual drivers in these phones.

To sum up, I felt bad about giving them to my son, so I glued the plastic pieces back in place and sold them on Ebay for a few dollars. Learn from my mistake and AVOID THESE CANS AT ANY COST! Ten dollars would be too much.