Behind the Scenes: Sony, Japan, and Headphones

One of the things that are absolutely essential to my personal workflow is music – I’ve shared here, here, and especially here about this in the past. There’s almost no time where there isn’t some music playing in our office or in our own personal eardrums.

I tweeted the other day though my particular headphones that I use and I got enough responses asking me what they are in particular that I decided to share it via a post. The issue is I spend an hour of time trying to actually find the exact pair that I own and sadly they are no longer for sale apparently.

I bought them years ago when I was still in college – so we are talking 9+ years ago, most likely my Junior year or some time thereabouts. They are made by Sony and were imported from Japan directly since they weren’t for sale stateside. They are heavy and made of metal, polished, and one of the cords is longer than the other (the right one).

Here are a few pictures. Again, for the life of me, I could not actually find where you can get them.

And the neat thing is that they come in a sweet leather case and have this plastic cord management system as well. I can’t remember the price but they easily cleared $200 US – although I doubt I paid more than $300.

Obviously they were worth the investment and they are one of the few pieces of technology that I hasn’t been replaced. What’s fascinating is that their style and design, I feel, are timeless and it appears now that this style is now very-much in vogue.

Sony was ahead of it’s time – unfortunately they have really fallen off the track in terms of their business and I really hope they get back on it quickly. I have a lot of fond memories around their product line(s) and I don’t want to lose them – I lived in Japan for almost 4 years in downtown Shibuya-ku, and it was one of the most fun times in my life.

This is also when I first encountered Sony en-masse and it further increased my obsession with gadgets and technology. A few scanned images that I was able to drum up from a very old camera:

I loved that period of my life and I love my now-extinct Sony headphones. They are just as important emotionally as they are functionally.

So, what headphones do you use in particular? And perhaps just as important, what is the story behind them?