This pair of headphones and I have a long, convoluted history. I bought it on the recommendation of two of my friends who have the non TI model (and they bought it based off my research when I was looking at replacing my ATH M50). Lets start with the trivial stuff.
This alone is epic. BEST WARRANTY CARD EVER.
The headphones came in a nice fabric case, with 2 different headphone cups (leather and velor), a headphone cable that connected to either cup and the headphones, in a nice shaped foam insert. Pretty awesome *usable* packaging.
This is how it was packaged. The other cups are below and are pretty easy to swap out. Embarassingly, I haven’t tried them yet.
Build quality is nice and solid – the cable is easily replaceable (and apparently there’s clones of this with different cable lengths) and it feels sturdy, and comfortable on my head (but I don’t have a monster noggin).
Sound quality is excellent. Sound quality is also highly subjective I guess. I’m not one of those folk who can wax lyrical about a pair of headphones but there’s a few things I can say. Its crystal clear, has good, tight bass, and I occasionally hear something off these phones and assume its someone behind me. I’d initially assumed my laptop onboard sound card struggled to power it but a few experiments later, I realised it just sounded ‘off’ compared to my better gear – the FA003 is SLIGHTLY unforgiving of totally crap soundcards – but unless you’ve got some badly designed one, or something off a laptop that dosen’t sound all that great anyway, its a non issue. I do regularly use it for non audiophile things like gaming and youtubery off my desktop. I generally pair it up with a desktop amp, and a external DAW for music, and run it off the amp and my onboard soundcard for everything else. These work *great* with a nice amp and sound card, and they don’t need to be terribly expensive.
One final note – I special ordered it. The other two guys I know who have it got it online. Its a pain in the ass to get – unless you can find someone to shut up and take your money
3 responses to “Product Review – The Fisher Audio FA-003 TI”
Hi!
I am going to buy these headphones.
The sound is great, but…
You write that they are soild built, but, in my country there are a lot or reviews that fixings are broken in a few months.
Could you, please, share your experience – are the fixings still alive?
Thanks in advance for your comments!
My headband lasted 3 years of heavy use. The metal forks are really solid. The plastic parts *eventually* broke, but not after three years. Fisher sells replacement parts if needed, which might be cheaper than a new one – I only realised that after replacing mine last month with the same model. They’re great headphones for *home* use. They don’t fold up well, and arn’t really for tossing into a bag. They certainly will last more than ‘a few months’
Do you have a link for these clone cables?