I know not many are into grado sound signatures around here, for good reason, they don't measure or sound fantastic. But if we can go back and consider grado to be joe grado era, is anyone interested in investigating the role of cups and driver interaction when considered in the grado style phone. Namely, the typical grado/magnum driver and simple cup with no damping material. I have some interesting ideas as to how we can get closer to the old joe sound using wood cups and at much less cost and have some measurements to back up the theories. But it would take some interested forumites here and some back and forth discussion to flesh out the possibilities. I feel there is untapped potential in that style of phone that has been lying there dormant while john grado took the ship and sailed it in a different direction. We can steer it back on course. Any pirates willing to board ship?

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the idea is that the driver should be held in a fairly resonant free state but that the cup resonating is paradoxically how this is achieved. The cup is tuned through mass, wall thickness, length, shape and finish treatment to accept the spent vibrations from the driver, sending them away from the driver itself in a quick manner so that the driver can function in a more stable environment compared to a realatively high mass cup that is more sonically dead and non resonant in which case the vibratins created at the driver location tend to feed back on itself leaving the driver in a less desirable position to do its thing. This is my experience with trying various cups and the more delicate cups always sound nicer and seem to measure nicer in all aspects. Better than any standard rs or ps grado. More fine tuning could be done with particular frequencies using cup geometry if needed as I 've already found the most synergystic woods .......