After my dad fell in love with my Amperior, I decided to gift it to him. Unfortunately, I did this without considering my budget and so my next portable headphone purchase needed to be cheap. Enter the JVC HA-S400-B.

I just bought them and even without any mods, I can already tell that they are amazing for the price. There are some issues here and there but hopefully damping the inside of the cups (I'm thinking of using a cork mat), replacing the pads and applying some duct tape to the front of the driver frame will sort them out as much as possible. One of the cables also makes a noise when moving it around due to being poorly secured in the cup. Considering how cheap these are, quality control issues like these are probably common. I think some epoxy will fix this particular problem though.

Here are some impressions before modding them:
-they are not neutral but not hugely colored, the mid-bass and lower mids are emphasized.
-the above makes them really, really good for metal, there is potential here for some really skullcrushing riffs.
-their clarity level is hugely above their price point, I'd say they can be compared to the ATH-M50 in terms of clarity.

I'll do the mods and share my impressions once I'm done.