Me + Shure E3c + RadioShack = Awesome.

Wall-e and the Shures.

After a solid 4 years of abuse,(1) my Shure E3c’s died on me about 6 months ago. The plug was exposed and the innards were dangling everywhere–I thought all hope was lost, so I just stuck with my ghetto iBuds. Eventually, after about 6 months of abuse, my iBuds died and only the left side worked. And slowly but surely I became desensitived to what music is supposed to sound like–any sort of noise that resembled a melody was enough for me.

It’s all a matter of perspective though. Last month, I decided to try to revive my Shures and got myself a cheapo-soldering kit and stereo plug from RadioShack(2). Now, the RadioShack bling is a little more attention than I’d like to draw to myself, but it’s usually in my pocket, hidden from view so I don’t mind.

After a good solid month, I’m happy to report they are as amazing as I remember. I got the chance to compare them to the new replacements, Shure SE310s, and a set of Ultimate Ears super.fi5 vi’s and super.fi5 pros. All three are super nice, but none of them are good enough to convince me to buy a new set.

They’re amazing. If you’ve never had a chance to use IEMs, you need to. Suddenly, I’m hearing reverb where I couldn’t hear it before and I swear you can hear the pick hit the strings on a few Mayer songs.

Footnotes:
  1. Two trips to Africa. Two trips through the washing machine. Countless drops into the show. One time I was running and accidentally yanked it out of my ear and then stepped on it. [↩]
  2. $15 for both, after tax [↩]