Stunning pair of VC! Enjoy
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Yes. My set is stabilized maple–that’s exactly what is printed on my owner’s card.
I contacted Zach back in April about a very extensive order including VC, Pendant w/ custom wood, extra cable, Salire stand, etc. I was planning on a dark leopardwood, but asked about colored stains as an option. Instead, Zach offered to make me a stabilized set (and you don’t say no to an opportunitly like that!).
It took 21 weeks to receive my order, but here’s what I ended up with:
Incidentally, my earcup was featured in a couple livestreams with Zach and Bevin earlier this summer. The quality on the YouTube video was so-so, and the cups weren’t finished at that point (bare wood, no lacquer), so for anyone who saw those streams, here’s where that set landed and what it looks like at completion.
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What does stabilized mean?
It means you take a piece of wood, in this case a very nicely figured and decorative wood, and submerge it in epoxy or a resin. Usually a dye is added to produce contrast and decoration as well. You then apply a strong vacuum for a long time forcing the air and moisture out of the wood which gets filled by the epoxy/resin. Before the epoxy sets, you remove it from vacuum and let it harden.
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Stabilized wood is thoroughly dried and treated with a “stabilizing” agent, like a resin or epoxy, which can make porous or funky pieces of wood solid enough to work. In addition, dyes may be used to add a variety of wild colors.
Typically, stabilized wood is used for small projects, like knife handles. Zach is creating a very limited number of sets of VCs using stabilized wood. In a livestream he mentioned that the cost of producing a set of stabilized cups is about 15x the cost of regular wood.
Here’s a site with some examples of differently colored stabilized woods:
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Adding to the comments above, @speleofool’s headphones and the photo in @ProfFalkin’s video above are known as spalted wood. Spalting results in naturally different colors and strengths of the same piece of wood. If used without stabilization, they’d likely fall apart.
Sample spalting:
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Spalted wood basically means rotting wood, to various degrees. Good links you provided.
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All interesting and very cool! Thanks for all the info! Learned something new today
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Dark dotting, winding lines and thin streaks of red, brown and black are known as zone lines. This type of spalting does not occur due to any specific type of fungus, but is instead an interaction zone in which different fungi have erected barriers to protect their resources.[8] They can also be caused by a single fungus delineating itself. The lines are often clumps of hard, dark mycelium, referred to as pseudosclerotial plate formation.[11]
Fascinating. That brings a whole new dimension of meta-irony to enjoying Infected Mushroom on the VCs. 
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Two models of the stabilized series are listed now in Finland. They are pretty cool!
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Some quick thoughts on the Vérité Closed…
A couple of months ago I placed an order from ZMF. Today my Vérité Closed arrived and I could not be more delighted.
Now that I’ve spent the entire day listening to them, I wanted to share some quick thoughts on what my experience has been with them so far. Of course, I haven’t really had the chance to try out and listen to all the different pad offerings, and the headphone hasn’t had the opportunity to break in for the period of time recommended by ZMF–so yeah, these are very much first impressions.
I suppose I’ll start off by discussing the headphones’ build, which is striking in its appearance, and is also remarkably ergonomic. When seeing it in pictures, I don’t think that the Vérité Closed looks that big, but in person it is actually quite large, maybe even one of the largest headphones I have seen thus far. Still, despite its size and wooden cups, the Vérité Closed is incredibly light, and it distributes its roughly-450g weight very evenly between the cups and headband. The pads are well-padded, supple and roomie, which helped in making these easy to wear all day.
As for sound, the Vérité Closed is undoubtedly one of the most unique headphones I’ve had the opportunity to experience. Whilst it does change considerably depending on the pads used, I do think that the Vérité Closed’s tonality is consistently characterized by well-defined, slightly warm bass, extremely tonally-rich mids, and airy, brilliant highs. For performance it strikes me as a very resolving, punchy and fast headphone, with a snappy transient response that gives a very natural introduction and decay to the notes played. Additionally, the Vérité Closed is one of the most open-sounding closed-back headphones, with a great sense of space that possesses an almost-holographic, 3D quality. If I’m being honest, I wouldn’t be able to tell that it’s a closed-back if I didn’t know that it was.
I think that aside from how open it sounded, one of the things that really impressed me (and surprised me, really) was just how much it changed depending on the pads used. Again, I haven’t enough time to detail how pads changed sound in my experience. Varying with the chosen pads, the Vérité Closed’s soundstage and tonality could see some pretty drastic changes, and it could go from a warm and exciting headphone, to a very linear and “neutral” sounding one.
Anyways, I know that these were pretty brief/vague impressions, but I’ll be posting a full review for my Vérité Closed this coming week. In the meantime, I’ll continue enjoying my Beatles 24/7 playlist 
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Congrats! You have a beautiful pair, and I love the color coordination of them with the stand and cable. That’s a nice setup to cherish (as with all ZMF headphones, of course).
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You’ll be comparing and reviewing all available pad combinations, right?
They look amazing, btw. Congrats
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Thank you! I’m really enjoying these, and they’re definitely mesmerizing!
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Hahaha I’ll try comparing as many pads as I can for sure
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Yes! Finally I get to kow your or Andrew’s opinion on these. There aren’t too many reviews on these yet but I’ve come same conclusion as you have, even tho I don’t have so many headphones listened yet.
Did you use the Auteur pads when mentioning soundstage etc? Solid, lambskin of course for closed.
Very hyped for the review, and glad I did use a ton of money on my Leopardwood set. 
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Congratulations on your new headphones. They look stunning.
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My ECP Audio DSHA-3F amp arrived this past Tuesday and I’ve been A/Bing against my much much cheaper Asgard 3 for a few hours. While this amp is aimed to pair well with the Focal Utopia, I really wanted to see how it’ll be like with the VC. Thankfully the Bifrost 2 can output both the single ended and balanced at the same time, allowing me to swap back and forth quite quickly to discern the differences. Overall I’d say the sound improved slightly across the spectrum.
Notice I mentioned the word “slight” a lot, but each of these subtle improvements do a add up to make the overall experience much better (to me at least). It’s not an insane night and day difference, but I do enjoy the 3F quite a lot as I have longer sessions with it. So here are my thoughts coming from the Asgard 3 (with EDM music):
- My unit came with nickel transformers, and I can hear slightly warmer tonality with more weight and texture to the bass. Apparently from most people, the nickel transformers give tube like characteristics, although I never heard a tube amp before, so I can’t comment on this.
- With the slight emphasis on the bass, depending on some songs, I can hear this nice tight and controlled rumble at the end of each kick drum. I definitely enjoy the slam more on this amp.
- I like how it made my VC slightly less congested, especially in busy passages. It’s likely due to the improvement in image separation, and I can easily identify the location each instrument more effortlessly.
- Because of better image separation, I can hear the vocals slight more opened up.
- There is slightly more stage depth.
Now I’m trying to find a seller that has the amorphous transformers, where it supposed to enhance the “3D holographic” effects (curious how this will sound like with the Universe pads), brings some air in the treble region and being slightly colder. If anyone selling these sets, please let me know!
I find this amp really knows how to fully utilize the driver capabilities, although I’m still quite happy with the Asgard 3 too. I mean especially for its current price point. So yea I think the VC pairs well with either of these two amps. I should really stop unplugging and plugging the cable between the amps back and forth and just enjoy the music though!
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I preferred the amorphous core transformer, personally. It is killer with the Auteur.
I have a good variety of warmer amps like the BW2. The nickel core transformer provides similar for the 3F. So it’s not a contrasting sound to what I had.
It is crazy difficult to find a solid state amp that does a clean sound that doesn’t kill musicality or commit other sins, but the 3F + amorphous does this better than any SS amp I’ve heard.
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Totally agree, which is why I’m trying to find someone that is selling the amorphous core set. I did ask ECP Audio to see if they can create me one, but it’ll be much more expensive than before, since the parts they’ll need buy isn’t the usual bulk price, which is understandable.
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