I wanted to follow up on this post. Basically my search is currently on hold.
First Wylie was great, I enjoyed talking to him. If you want Grados, I suggest you check him out. His prices are a little below the online sites, he is still an authorized dealer, and you get to test them locally before you buy.
Unfortunately I was concerned about comfort with the Grados. Personally they were not a good fit.
I bought a pair of AKG K240 Studios that I demo'd at Guitar Center with no problem. I liked the sound, but after listening to them for periods longer than the 10 minutes or so I demo'd in-store I found that I was getting a tingling, mild pain sensation in the outer-cartilage of my ears. A few online searches later I found that this could be indicative of the beginning of painful nerve death. I decided to return them rather than succumb to a potential painful constant pain outcome.
At this point I should note that I don't have big outer ears and I don't listen at loud volumes. In fact, I can't figure out why people complain about or note that open-ear headphones can be heard by those around them. As a test I turned them up to what I considered to be loud levels, and clamped them to my knee (a head analogue). I couldn't tell that either the AKG or the Grados were even playing at these levels.
After I returned the AKG headphones they fixed the damper in the ventilation unit above my desk. Now my cubicle is significantly louder than it was before, enough so that I am second guessing whether I want to be playing non-isolated headphones loud enough to hear over the rush of A/C.
PS/Aside. On a whim I stopped by Best Buy for the first time in a long time. Yes, they did have a headphone display, but it sucked. Put on headphones, holy-crap that is loud, adjust volume to lowest audible level over store din, listen for awhile, source randomly resets volume blasting you in the ears. The worst offender was the Dr. Beats display which after given me about 15 seconds of the desired acoustic music reset to awful synthesized rap music at a painful volume with no ability to reset.
Also, presuming a Best Buy rep is reading this, if I can't demo audio equipment in the store, what is the advantage of buying local? Local = service, online = cheap. The store I went to didn't have a demo room (most used to). Most of the receiver/cd/etc units weren't plugged in, and the ones that were you couldn't evaluate over the generally loud store.
Bill
