Continuing our coverage of the Marshall Major OnEar Headphones, I wanted to do an in-depth review of these amazing headphones. We got the Marshall Headphones line from legendary guitar amplifier maker Marshall in store the other day, and I immediately bought a pair because of my guitar roots and my love for comfortable headphones.
These headphones are excellently crafted and reproduce music at a very high level. Growing up as a guitarist, you learn one name very quickly, and that is Marshall. Guitars go in and out of phase of being great, some people prefer one over another. But amplifiers are pretty consistent across the board, and Marshall is the name every guitarist knows and trusts.
When Marshall leaked that they were partnering with Zounds (they are from Sweden) to design a set of headphones, a lot of people in the guitar community were excited. With these headphones, Marshall flexes the muscle they know how to make a great pair over the ear headphones.
So now on to the review.
Look and Feel:
These headphones are beautiful. Period. The packaging is a specially designed cardboard enclosure that houses the headphones in a Zippo Lighter-like container. The first thing that is noticeable is the Marshall Logo on each side of the ear cans.
On closer inspection, you see the backdrop of the logo is actually the vinyl they use on the amplifiers the company produces. Excellent quality all around. The speakers are covered in the same grill cloth they use on the cabinets and amps.
The headband is leather underneath with a signature by Dr. Jim Marshall underneath the headband and the same vinyl on top. The ear cans are adjustable to fit many different types of head sizes and they can actually fold up for compact carrying. The cable is roughly four feet long, but is coiled for six inches so the cable itself is longer than the four feet.
The headphone plug is gold and is 1/8” (3.5mm for you metric people), you get a 1/8” to 1/4” adapter for use with those type of headphone jacks. I do not like earbuds because they very rarely fit my ears, so over the ear headphones are my style of headphone.
These fit very well and the cushion they have employed on the ear cans are incredibly comfortable. You can tell these were designed to be worn a lot because of how comfortable they are. So in total, these look and feel high quality.
Sound:
These are the best sounding headphones I have ever used. Headphones often get a bad rap because they do not have the same size drivers as their larger counterparts. They reproduce a great spectrum of frequencies without being overpowering at any range. The lows are tight, not muddy.
I listen to an eclectic mix of music and something that I always like using as a test is a anything by Heitor Villa-Lobos, a South American composer. He has these bass lines that are constantly moving and can often sound muffled depending on the audio setup, they sound very crisp on these headphones. This gives me the feeling that I want to be listening to a good vinyl copy of “A Hard Days Night” in my parents basement while reading the liner notes.
These are great headphones are at a great price point for something of this quality. I thought they would be at least triple this amount when I first heard of them, but they really knocked these out of the park.
I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys great audio reproduction and classy aesthetics. Also, my 9-year-old yellow Lab, Brandi loves them too.