Only ordered this just in case, still haven't gotten to the point where I may need it, but it's a glaring anxiety that I'll only have one.
Some time after purchase, blast e-mail notification detailing the misunderstood product details, no second earpad ever arrived.
Disastrous drop with terrible groub buy experience by any metric. I don't even know if I can recommend the pads themselves as some people have reported that they aren't on par with the equivalent Focal Clear pads in terms of quality
I received two slightly different pads months apart from each other and months after I ordered them. Booooo. I wouldn't have even complained because I did receive a refund but Drop wants me to write more reviews so here it is. Booooo!
This entire drop has been a colossal failure of leadership on the part of Massdrop. (I refuse to refer to them as their catchy new name.) First off: Shipping a single pad, when the clear intention was a pair of pads was a mistake. This might have been the fault of Massdrop of Focal, we can't know for sure. The major flaw in judgement was not taking responsibility for this mistake and trying to push the blame on the supplier. Own your mistake. You should have checked what you were shipping.
Secondly: Taking 4 months to recognize the sheer number of complaints about the quality of the pads being shipped is unacceptable. I'm aware this is occuring during a pandemic, but at least acknowledge the issue and give more frequent updates as to the resolution of the problem. Again, own your mistake.
Now we are all sitting around wondering if we should cancel our order 9 months later with no idea when this debacle will reach a conclusion. To top it all off, their service department seems to have no clue this is going on. My communication with them has been laughable at best.
I was excited to receive these pads as I was hoping for a smoother frequency response from my Elears. I'm guessing I'll never get the chance to hear this. Regardless of how this ends, MASSDROP has permanently lost a customer. I imagine I'm not alone.
jesse_wilsonI'm posting this mainly for the benefit of anyone reading.
I just bought 2 pads for my Elear's, direct from Focal for £90 - original, same as new, perfect quality, arrived within days ...... and there were two of them :)
I'll be the first to admit Focal will scalp you on pricing - (it cost me nearly £400 to get the headband replaced when it snapped after 2 years) - but I've always found their quality to be excellent. From reading the comments, these sound like cheap knock-offs.
Steve
I love my Elex headphones, I use them all day every day. If I had realized that the pads deteriorate at the speed they do, it would have been a knock against them, but would likely have still bought them. These headphones are worth an ongoing cost of a new set of pads every 1-1.5 years.
But it turns out these pads are rarely in stock. When they are, you get shipped partial orders, and the pads you receive are CLEARLY not the same. They are noticeably less comfortable, and significantly impact the soundstage. The elex with these pads is not the same thing as the elex with the originals.
With a combination of all these things, I would would not recommend the Elex, which is a damn shame because this is the dumbest reason I have ever had for not recommending headphones.