Launched earlier this year in a limited-edition run, the OAE1 Signature is our first pair of over-ear headphones made by the legendary Axel Grell.   Now, we’re bringing the OAE to a broader audience—with a few small but important changes. The most noticeable change is the subdued black finish. Complementing that finish, there are now large Left and Right indicators on the dust covers inside the earcups to help with orientation and placement. Beyond the aesthetics, the clamping force of the headband has been reduced from 3.5 N to 3 N (Newton Meters) for a slightly more relaxed fit. Finally, the OAE1 will include a single sided 6.3 mm TRS cable with an indicator stripe to help reduce cable insertion errors. Most important, however, is what’s staying the same: the sound. The tuning is identical with the original OAE1 signature.  The Drop + Grell OAE1 Headphones launch on November 13th, 2024. The initial quantity will be limited as we work to ramp up production. Hit "Request" to be...

Figure 1: Oh yeah, I meant it when I said obscure... There’s no doubt that mechanical keyboard switches have gotten increasingly better in their stock forms over the past half decade of releases. Despite switches now having tighter manufacturing tolerances, smoother factory lubing, and overall higher quality per dollar spent, aftermarket modifications of switches is still one of the most discussed topics by people freshly joining the hobby today. This hyper fixation on switch modding is due in no small part to the glut of keyboard content creators that produced videos, shorts, and all manner of content during the peak of COVID talking about the art and science behind lubing and filming for switches. For a while there, it almost seemed as if you had to have some content about lubing, filming, and/or ‘frankenswitching’ switches if you wanted to cut it as being a true keyboard content creator in the space. However, as people like this have flooded the internet with...

We’re beyond excited to announce our first collaboration with the boutique IEM brand Campfire Audio. It’s a partnership several years in the making—and now, the Drop + Campfire Audio IEMs are just weeks away from launch. This collaboration has been several years in the making. Drop/Massdrop has worked with a number of IEM companies over the years bringing a variety of IEM collaborations to our Audiophile community. Campfire Audio has been in the IEM game for many years now, often setting high marks for their flashy designs and great sounding line of IEMs. Although both teams had been interested in working together for a long time it was only recently that the stars aligned to where we were able to make something happen. The idea for our first product came from Campfire Audio founder Ken Ball, who proposed taking the brand’s limited-run Black Star IEM and revamping it with their never-before-seen bio-film membrane bass driver into a newly tuned, competitively priced IEM...

If you watched Star Wars for the first time, without seeing images of the Empire’s perfectly spaced thousands of goose-stepping minions in spotless white-lacquered armor. If you didn’t see the fleets of black and grey tie-fighters, the immaculately designed star cruisers, the evil moon-shaped flagship… you wouldn’t know that the rebels were rebels. After all, rebels don’t look like rebels if they don’t have something to contrast them against. They just look like normal people. That’s probably why when you see Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Finn (all rebels) dressed in stormtrooper garb, they somehow seem even more rebellious then they were before. It’s not what they’re wearing, it’s how they wear it. Dirty, scuffed, broken. Helmet missing or askew. An out of place, beat up weapon slung diagonally across their body. It’s the simple act of defacing the uniform that identifies them in our mind as counter-cultural. Funnily enough, it works in reverse. To the dismay of...