Audioadvisor has the Focal Clear grey earpads for $99.
Bloom Audio has them for $149.
Alex
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Phyrric Victory: I joined the Clear club and am instantly hearing more details and experiencing less fatigue. But now, the production flaws of many recordings are all too obvious…
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Congratulations they are a fine set of headphones. I will be interested to hear your thoughts when you have had a good amount of time with them.
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I’m finding that the prior reviews were spot-on. This is one reason why I don’t do reviews myself…I absolutely resist being an early adopter of audio hardware, so I have nothing to add by the time I end up buying a product. Too much snake oil, too many QC issues.
Quoting from @Torq on the Elex vs. Clear in this thread (above):
Furthermore:
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Very wise words. I have come to think over your past comments that you aren’t one to rush into things and always think things through before jumping in. I may be wrong of course. Sadly I am quite impulsive and have been bitten on the arse so to speak more than once in rushing into things unwisely. Enjoy your clears.
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Congrats on your Clears…I almost bought HD800s when a person told me to go listen to the Clears…
I did and 30 sec after hitting play, I bought them.
The tonality as many have cited are almost perfect IMO…for a dynamic headphone this tonality and overall accuracy is just plain amazing…
I only use lossless source material and even with this there are many songs that are just not that good recording wise…but when you get to those that are done well its heaven!!
I spent hundreds of hours looking for very well recorded stuff and have a list of things I use for demo’ing etc that I think is very, very well done.
When you get to a setup that allows you to hear the good and bad and its tonally accurate (ie piano sounds like a real piano, bass and strings sound natural, you can hear the resonances, the mic placement in the recording, drum swich’s, and Eva Cassidy’s highest registers without any sibilance…) well then your clost to the end game…
The Clears and several amps with a B2 Schiit dac get me there. My favorite with the Clears is the TUBA.
Enjoy your new Clears!!!
All the best
Alex
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Don’t you still have both original Elear pads? Better use those 'cause those perforations inside are there for a reason, they prop the mids where it matters. Not sur Elex have the same pattern. In al the pad-sapping I’ve done with my Focals in the end I always reverted to the originals. Gotta admit the Elear looks fantastic with the Utopia pads though. In general more perforations boosts the mids but has a negative effect on bass response.
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I just got a replacement set of earpads for my clears, bought last October in the trade in for $999 sale.
After a few months I bought the SONAX brand of alcantara cleaner some have seen on the various sites for cleaning these pads…well I did this and my Clear pads discolored into a darker grey color and really changed the look etc…
Here is a pix of the one cleaned vs the new originals…
I would NOT recommend this cleaner. In real life they look much darker than in the photo…
FYI
Alex
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Ouch! Chemicals in the cleaner probably strong enough to affect the original dye. My guess is that SONAX simply assumed alacantra would always be dark in colour (90% probably is) and didn’t properly test for discolouration. I use that really soft detergent for delicate fabrics, gently hand-wash and it does a good job without affecting tint as far as I (and everyone else) can tell. Takes forever to dry due to memory foam absorbing some water though, that thing’s a sort of sponge after all.
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Woolite? Or the one with the teddy bear?
Laugh if you must but it’s called The Laundress and it says something like Lady Scented on the bottle. Its purpose is mainly for washing silk underwear by hand. Used for pads I reckon a bottle will last 4 or 5 lifetimes. Long-term investment. Smell of your phones may raise an eyebrow if someone else uses them but it doesn’t last long if you rinse properly.
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I have a slightly used can of SONAX I will sell for “cheap” !!! LOL!
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I try to treat all my headphones like a lady.
Joking aside, good tip. Thank you!
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You’re welcome, I had the same reaction when I inquired about a detergent for my headphone collection, most of which has either alacantra, leather, foam (Grado) and (for the elders among them) velvet (those can only be dry-cleaned). At the time I bought the cleaner I didn’t have a single pair with light-coloured pads (still only have the Clear with those) so I wasn’t aware I was taking a risk when I first washed them. Fortunately they came out of it looking ever so slightly lighter but that was due to dirt removal.
@lost33 This may sound extreme but I know someone who washes his Clear pads 1part bleach/50 parts water and a tiny bit of Softsoap. Maybe that’ll restore the original colour on yours, his always look extra-clean. Such diluted bleach leaves no scent.
EDIT: say @los33 those darken pads of yours would likely look great on the Elear, seriously. Most people who use Clear pads on the Elear (a fair lot do) find the poor colour-matching deplorable. Personally I found it godawful when I swapped pads between those two to see if it would lighten up the Dark Avenger aka Elear but that charcoal hue would complement the Elear nicely. Just imho in case a despondent Elear/Clear pad owner ever reads this.
Sadly I am quite impulsive and have been bitten on the arse so to speak more than once in rushing into things unwisely.
Same here but as a collector I have a good excuse to sometimes purchase phones/DC’s?amps etc. on impulsion but the phones I can always justify the acquisition to myself by adding them to my collection but the electronics I don’t collect so I almost always end up turning them back to the store in return for yet another headphone that I just “had” to buy because it was on sale or some other not-so-smart pretense. Fortunately I used my tax returns to pay for my freshly acquired Stellia, not my credit card.
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Welcome to the club! I own and like several other brands so I’m not speaking as a fanboy when I say the audiophile-class Focals (Elegia, Elear, Clear, Stellia and Utopia) have to be one of the best-designed headphone series on the market, and the market agrees considering Focal now accounts for a sizable chunk of the high-end dynamics yet they’ve only been around for 6 years. The fact that Focal make their own drivers for their highly regarded speakers is no stranger to this. They know their acoustics, and it shows.
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I have Clear pads on my Elears. When I’m wearing them, they look exactly the same to me as the black pads!
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I have 1/2 set of pads from the Drop…1/2 because they only sent out 1 pad!! Issue between Drop and Focal, waiting on them to send the second pad sometime hopefully in my lifetime!! Ha!
I got the set I have now for $149 from Bloom Audio…and I do have a set on back order with Audio Advisor for $99…
Funny thing I contacted Focal last October about the dis-coloration and never got a response…BUT yesterday I looked thru my SPAM folder and voila I found an email from back then asking for my address.
And the email stated the cost was $99 and had no idea why folks are selling for $200?
So I sent them a reply yesterday and got an immediate reply stating they are at home in Canada due to the virus stuff until the 14th of April…and they would contact me when they get back to work.
They offered to sell to me direct.
We shall see…fingers crossed!
Alex
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Oh,
Forgot to mention the pads from Drop that are for their Focals (Elex I think) are black and they are NOT like the Clear pads…they are less thick and the foam used is much softer and easy to depress…the overall quality of these are far less than the orignal Clear Grey pads…
So what I am saying here is dont waste your $$$ here…
Alex
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It’s a good match then. I knew it! 
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I have 1/2 set of pads from the Drop…1/2 because they only sent out 1 pad!! Issue between Drop and Focal, waiting on them to send the second pad sometime hopefully in my lifetime!! Ha!
Aw, I hope you got the better half then 
I got the set I have now for $149 from Bloom Audio…and I do have a set on back order with Audio Advisor for $99…
Not too bad considering that $99 is usually the least expensive one would pay (if they’re lucky) for Elear pads. I think Elex and Elegia are ever-so-slightly less expensive but you need to shop around.
Went on French audio site the other night, had to use Google Translate (GT is extremely funny when it has to deal with slang, many sentences made absolutely no sense and I had to guesstimate their meaning). Up there I found A LOT of people use the Elear pads on the Utopia. Apparently they get deeper bass and tamed mids so they can listen louder, and alacantra is more comfortable than lambskin on long runs. It is true that Utopia and loud, energetic music are not the best of pairings. They can get not quite piercing, but “pearcy” they do get. The looks well, meh. The Elear pad looks its best on the Elear… but so does the Urtopia pads, they look better on the Elear than on the Utopia. Colour match issue I guess, the Elear are black after all, and it’s the same deep black as the Utopia pad. On the Utopia itself the full silver-coloured Elear logo is too prominent. The “empty” logo on the Elear does a much better job in a discreet styling that lets the pads display the synergy with the pad show better.
Funny thing I contacted Focal last October about the dis-coloration and never got a response…BUT yesterday I looked thru my SPAM folder and voila I found an email from back then asking for my address.
I find the most unexpected gems in the spam box too
And the email stated the cost was $99 and had no idea why folks are selling for $200?
Really, they said that? Must be the Utopia pads that go for $200 then. After all even Dekoni wants $99 for the Utopia pads so that means the real thing is quite more pricey.
So I sent them a reply yesterday and got an immediate reply stating they are at home in Canada due to the virus stuff until the 14th of April…and they would contact me when they get back to work.
Yup, it’s pretty dead up here, and I live in southern Canada where winter is gone and stuff is supposed to be happening, but nothing, people just stay home or cautiously do their groceries. In Edmonton (that’s where Focal North America is I believe?) I suppose most of the 1.2 million people who live up there in the north are frozen stiff. Our authorities even closed the border with the US unless visitors from the US agree to a 14-day quarantine at their own expense. Not sure it’s fair because we “only” get 8 days if we go to the US, but the situation in your country is worse than here, so… They let goods in though, trucks, trains, planes.
They offered to sell to me direct.
Take it!
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