Has anyone compared a Bose QuietComfort 2 (http://www.bose.com/controller?event=DTC_LINKS_TARGET_EVENT&DTCLinkID=2724&perfsourceid=k15318&src=k15318) headset to the John Deere Noise Canceling Headset (http://www.johndeeregifts.com/product-product_id/290298) or seen a review? The cost of the Bose QuietComfort 2 is still $300 while the John Deere Noise Canceling Headset is $90.

Has anyone compared a Bose QuietComfort 2 (http://www.bose.com/controller?event=DTC_LINKS_TARGET_EVENT&DTCLinkID=2724&perfsourceid=k15318&src=k15318) headset to the John Deere Noise Canceling Headset (http://www.johndeeregifts.com/product-product_id/290298) or seen a review? The cost of the Bose QuietComfort 2 is still $300 while the John Deere Noise Canceling Headset is $90.
Wow, I figure if it can cancel out a lawnmower or leafblower, it should be able to drown out an airplane if it cancels into that frequency range.

I am sure you will find that the old adage is true:

You get what you pay for.

I am sure you will find that the old adage is true:

You get what you pay for.

Except of course that with the Bose you overpay because it is a Bose.

Except of course that with the Bose you overpay because it is a Bose.
:)

Actually

:D

Except of course that with the Bose you overpay because it is a Bose.


Actually a product is worth every penny that a consumer is willing to pay for it. In the case of Bose that means the headsets are worth every penny of $299. It called capitalism. It's also the way they sell plane tickets.

Actually a product is worth every penny that a consumer is willing to pay for it. In the case of Bose that means the headsets are worth every penny of $299. It called capitalism.Well, that's what it was obviously worth to that single consumer at the time of purchase. (Otherwise he wouldn't have bought it...)
But that doesn't preclude the possibility that he could have bought a product with equal, similar or even better qualities for a lot less money. I'm sure, there are plenty of people out there who would prefer the Bose headset at triple the price, even if its technical qualities were equal or inferior to the John Deere headset, simply because they wouldn't want to be seen with a John Deere logo on their headset.
John Deere on the other hand, would probably have a very hard time selling its headset at $300, even if its technical qualities would justify the price, just because the the typical John Deer equipment operator would never ever pay 300 bucks for a pair of headphones...

Pricing is just as much about about image and perception as it is about quality.

Actually a product is worth every penny that a consumer is willing to pay for it. In the case of Bose that means the headsets are worth every penny of $299. It called capitalism. It's also the way they sell plane tickets.

Well, that and the fact that no one offers a circum-aural headphone superior to the Bose at any price.

ScottC's a big fan of canalphones like the Etymotics, UEs and Shures, as are many others. There are those of us that find them uncomfortable and/or too isolating (can't talk to a seatmate or FA without giving yourself a wet willie, for example).

There have been quite a few contestants for Bose's circum-aural throne (PlaneQuiet, Solitude, Sennheiser, Sony, others) but none match the Bose in comfort or fidelity.

Oh, and Bose speakers, including their home theater stuff, suck. Unfortunately, the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is very high for home electronics that offer style over substance.

The picture in the link to the John Deere headset appears to be in black and white. I gotta know . . . are they bright green, with yellow trim?

That would be freekin' awesome . . . FC on a transcon with a set of those, some biballs, and cow-manure encrusted boots :D

Edit: Check out the description . . . the JD's are compatible with all NASCAR race scanners, but are not recommended for use on the gun range :D

I'd add further commentary, but I don't think this thread belongs in OMNI. At least just yet . . .

Looks like they're clearly black and silver, although there is a Deere logo on the side (in white).

If it's designed to cut the noise of power equipment, it may well not work as well with the airplane noise. Plus, I'd simply rather carry something smaller on a plane than these big honking things. :D (Might be a good idea for saving my ears mowing the lawn, though....)

Well, that and the fact that no one offers a circum-aural headphone superior to the Bose at any price.

There have been quite a few contestants for Bose's circum-aural throne (PlaneQuiet, Solitude, Sennheiser, Sony, others) but none match the Bose in comfort or fidelity.

I assume you're talking only about noise-canceling or noise-isolating headphones? Check out some of the high-end models from Sennheiser, AKG, Beyerdynamic, Ultrasone. Some might not be quite as comfortable, and none t offer active noise-cancelation, but in a quiet environment paired with a decent pre-amp the precision of the sound will blow away your Bose.

delete

Bose... Better sound through marketing...

I assume you're talking only about noise-canceling or noise-isolating headphones? Check out some of the high-end models from Sennheiser, AKG, Beyerdynamic, Ultrasone. Some might not be quite as comfortable, and none t offer active noise-cancelation, but in a quiet environment paired with a decent pre-amp the precision of the sound will blow away your Bose.

Noise-canceling specifically. I certainly wouldn't put them up against true audiophile phones, and I agree with ScottC 100% that they don't sound as good as the high-quality canalphones mentioned in my previous post. I simply don't find canalphones comfortable, and the Bose are the best-sounding circum-aural Active Noise Canceling phones.

ScottC's a big fan of canalphones like the Etymotics, UEs and Shures, as are many others. There are those of us that find them uncomfortable and/or too isolating (can't talk to a seatmate or FA without giving yourself a wet willie, for example).


Shure is about to come out with a "push to hear" device that connects to their headsets and evidently contains a microphone to allow you to hear the stewardess ask for your drink order. But I haven't seen it on the market yet.

Bose... Better sound through marketing...

:D

I have Sony's and love them, last week I picked up in-ear Sennheuser's, they are not as comfortable but much smaller. I refused to pay the premium for the Bose name.

John Deere on the other hand, would probably have a very hard time selling its headset at $300, even if its technical qualities would justify the price, just because the the typical John Deer equipment operator would never ever pay 300 bucks for a pair of headphones...


I don't know, ever priced John Deere equipment, it aint cheap

Bose... Better sound through marketing...


doh

was it Saturday already!

I assume you're talking only about noise-canceling or noise-isolating headphones? Check out some of the high-end models from Sennheiser, AKG, Beyerdynamic, Ultrasone. Some might not be quite as comfortable, and none t offer active noise-cancelation, but in a quiet environment paired with a decent pre-amp the precision of the sound will blow away your Bose.
I ordered the John Deere headphones and am traveling next week so will post a report. I previoulsy bought the Bose QuietComfort2 headphones and left on plane (with my business card inside the case.) :(

Is it me, or are those JD headphones built to look exactly like QC2's?

Bose... Better sound through marketing...
That my friend is an oxymoron.

Next patient please, (ding) bring in another victim of industrial disease!

I'm sure I'm speaking from the cheap seats, but the Sharper Image headphones did a great job on very long flights recently. I'm sure there's better, but for about $40 they made a great difference. If they break, or get lost, I sure wouldn't be kicking myself that I spent too much. (Hey, this is my 100th post!)

Sony had that feature in its in-ear MDR-NC10s. When they came out with the MDR-NC11s, they dropped that feature. I have no idea why. I still use ny NC10s.

Shure is about to come out with a "push to hear" device that connects to their headsets and evidently contains a microphone to allow you to hear the stewardess ask for your drink order. But I haven't seen it on the market yet.

Is it me, or are those JD headphones built to look exactly like QC2's?

Gotta agree there.

I would love them in green with the yellow trim as pork rind suggested.

I have a pair of Sony's and think they are extremely uncomfortable and the noise cancelling is poor...Just my opinion, but they don't fit over the ear and they always slide off if I lean against the window when sleeping.

I lost a pair of 1st generation Bose headphones and I really liked them. They fit snug over the ear and the noise canceling was very good.

Haven't tried the QC-2's yet, nor in-the-ear models, so can't comment.

fduvall


:D

I have Sony's and love them, last week I picked up in-ear Sennheuser's, they are not as comfortable but much smaller. I refused to pay the premium for the Bose name.

if anyone finds them forsale in the UK please let me know, cos I'd love a pair of these, and I can't find them for sale!

At first I thought these could be rebranded Outside the Box Inc.'s Plane Quiet or Solitude headphones, but the more I compare the photo(s), it appears to be a rebranded Bose QC2.

At first I thought these could be rebranded Outside the Box Inc.'s Plane Quiet or Solitude headphones, but the more I compare the photo(s), it appears to be a rebranded Bose QC2.
It looks like it is John Deere - here is the link to the John Deere website (http://www.deere.com/en_US/newsroom/2005/releases/corporate/2005_1122_ncheadset.html).

Here's the answer:

WSJ - Startup Journal Article (http://www.startupjournal.com/columnists/enterprise/20060201-bounds.html)

Being Small Can Help
Win the Big Contract
By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.

From The Wall Street Journal Online


In the summer of 2004, Dean Hamke sat down at the computer to find possible contenders that could create noise-canceling headphones for his company, Deere & Co. As one of the nation's top suppliers of outdoor-landscaping equipment under the John Deere brand, the company wanted to tap the booming do-it-yourself market.

But that meant getting headphones down to a mass-market retail price. And as a manager of licensing Deere, Mr. Hamke was charged with finding a partner who could oblige without diluting the Deere brand. With $21.93 billion in fiscal 2005 revenue, and a logo recognized world-wide, Deere is an example of a conglomerate that goes to great lengths to do reconnaissance about its partners -- and its search for a headphones partner shows how small businesses sometimes have an edge over bigger ones.

"We've dealt with some big companies where it's all bureaucracy and management is always changing, and you never know who you are talking to and yours is just one of thousands of projects they take on," Mr. Hamke says. "Smaller companies want to move quickly and are looking for the next great idea."

Like many companies in industries from consumer products and media to sports and apparel, Deere licenses its name to dozens of other firms -- big and small -- which then use their expertise to create products such as hats, boots and toys under the John Deere name. Licensing lets a company expand its product base -- and sales -- without making big infrastructure investments in unfamiliar arenas. In exchange for lending a powerful brand name to a product, the companies collect royalties on the sales. Licensed products generate some $110 billion annually in retail sales, according to the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association.

Consumers, however, don't necessarily pay attention to such technicalities -- assuming that if a company's name is slapped on a ware, then that firm made it. Which means companies must take great care in picking licensing partners.

To grade potential partners, Deere measures such things as turnaround time, financial viability, warranty cost and sales with a pass/fail system. But Deere also judges licensees based on something it dubs "wavelength" -- attributes that matter in the relationship. An example: Does it take a business three days or 30 minutes to call back with an answer to a question? What kind of outward respect do they show for the Deere brand? How quickly can they make prototype changes?

Attending to such details is how David Dillinger of Pineville, N.C., a pilot turned entrepreneur, got and kept the Deere headphones deal -- one that's put his company, Outside the Box Inc., on track to double last year's $2.5 million revenue in 2006. He founded his company in 2001 to create thick, durable blankets for airplanes after seeing how quickly existing blankets disintegrated. Eventually, he says, he started playing with Bose Corp. noise-canceling headphones and believed he could create a competing product at a much lower cost.

Mr. Dillinger created two models of his own, a basic one called PlaneQuiet for $54.95 and higher-end model dubbed Solitude for $199.95, and sold them through his Web site www.protravelgear.com. That's what Mr. Hamke at Deere found when he was surfing and looking for possible prototypes for a Deere model. After narrowing potential prospects to three, he picked up the phone and began cold calling those candidates, one of whom was Mr. Dillinger.

He told Mr. Dillinger that he liked his designs and liked the price of the PlaneQuiet because Deere needed to keep it under $100 -- too low he expected for a well-known maker such as Bose, whose QuietComfort 2 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones currently retail for about $300. Meantime, Deere also needed significant tweaks made to any model for it to fly with their buyers. Could Mr. Dillinger do that? Mr. Hamke wondered.

With a tiny staff of seven, including his wife, Renée, Mr. Dillinger says he was initially "dumbfounded" by the cold call. Deere, of Moline, Ill., has 46,000 world-wide employees and does business in some 160 countries; working with such a big player would require resources and time that would stretch Outside the Box thin. But Mr. Dillinger recognized the enormous upside potential of landing such a contract, so he told Deere "Yes."

From the start, Mr. Dillenger put himself at Deere's beck and call. For instance, the company needed tricky modifications in the product's "articulation index" -- the range of sound let in -- so it could cancel out a running motor but still let the wearer hear a child yelling or a siren. Mr. Dillinger himself drove out to the Deere engineering center in Charlotte, N.C., and sat fine-tuning the headphones while a lawn tractor roared nearby in a test facility. Says Mr. Hamke: "We made those suggestions to David and they were more than willing and would turn things around in days."

When the headphones, which are just now rolling out into Lowe's Cos. stores, went into production in China, Mr. Dillinger got a call from Deere saying they had forgotten to put a certain logo on the package. Production was halted, little stickers made to correct the error and pasted on by hand, and Mr. Dillinger swallowed the cost.

"All John Deere knows is that we made it happen," Mr. Dillinger says. However, Mr. Dillinger also wisely used Deere's bigness to protect his interests. Since Deere owns its distributor, Mr. Dillinger was able to negotiate for the latter to pay 30% upfront for the product to mitigate production costs. He also asked for payment in full before the product would ship from China -- and got it.

When done, Mr. Dillinger's John Deere headphones came in at $89.99, just as Deere had requested. The product began shipping late last year and is now in Lowe's and in some of John Deere's 3,000 U.S. and Canadian independent retailers as well as its www.johndeeregifts.com Web site.

Mr. Hamke adds: "With David, here was a guy that knew all the technical details and a lot about the market. He wasn't just a stuffed suit. If there's not a passion for the product, you don't get anywhere. A lot of big companies lose that quickly. That's one of the benefits of looking at a small one."

I don't know, ever priced John Deere equipment, it aint cheapSure, it ain't cheap, but the guy operating the equipment is not necessarily the one who owns it... ;)

with them be3ing sold at Lowes, I'll bet you'll be able to find them for under $70 pretty soon ...

Great story on Outside the Box. I love it when a little guy gets in with a big company.

----------------------

How does a farmer know when his wife has left him?





He gets a John Deere letter. :D

They're $89.95 at Lowe's. Here's the page; you can check availability at your local store: http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=227860-573-GX22225

I'm curious to hear how they work on an airplane. It would appear from the articles that they've been tuned to work better with outdoor power equipment, but that may not necessarily lessen the effectiveness for in-flight noise.

They're $89.95 at Lowe's. Here's the page; you can check availability at your local store: http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=227860-573-GX22225

I'm curious to hear how they work on an airplane. It would appear from the articles that they've been tuned to work better with outdoor power equipment, but that may not necessarily lessen the effectiveness for in-flight noise.

FWIW, on the John Deere site, it mentioned that they plug into airplane audio, so it seems to imply that it would work on a plane...

AJ

FWIW, on the John Deere site, it mentioned that they plug into airplane audio, so it seems to imply that it would work on a plane...

AJ
I received my John Deere "noise cancelling" headsets last week and tried them on a trip this week. While they are comfortable, they were altogether ineffective in cancellation of jet engine noise and you can barely hear the audio due to the jet engine noise. Stick with your Bose headphones or ear phones or wait for the next generation of whatever. Don't buy this version of the John Deere headset if you plan to use it for air travel. :td:

David Rowell at wwaw.travelinsider.info has done extensive reviews of noise cancelling headphones. I don't know if he has reviewed the John Deere.

David Rowell at wwaw.travelinsider.info has done extensive reviews of noise cancelling headphones. I don't know if he has reviewed the John Deere.
His reviews must be taken with a grain of salt. He receives referral compensation from the PlaneQuiet folks . . . or at least he did while the bulk of them were written.

The WSJ article specifically says these Deere phones were designed to muffle mower and leaf blower sounds whilst pass ing along the sounds of sirens and screaming kids - and screaming kid noises are an immediate disqualifier for any flyer.

W

The WSJ article specifically says these Deere phones were designed to muffle mower and leaf blower sounds whilst pass ing along the sounds of sirens and screaming kids - and screaming kid noises are an immediate disqualifier for any flyer.

W
I hope other flyers are that smart but i wasn't becuase and the article or a web site (which I can't find now) or both mentioned airplane noise and the John Deere says the following on their web site:

>>>
John Deere Noise Canceling Headset
Item: LPGX22225

YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EARS!!! Utilizing patented noise canceling algorithms, the John Deere Noise Canceling Headset provides 18 decibels of noise cancellation which is the highest of any active noise reduction (ANR) headset on the market. The only headset specially tuned to reduce the ambient repetitive noise produced by residential and commercial lawn tractors, agricultural equipment and hand held products such as gas trimmers, leaf blowers, etc.
At a fraction of the cost of other widely advertised high end audio headsets, the John Deere headset meets and exceeds the requirements of the most discerning audiophile! Compatible with MP3 and CD players, portable audio equipment, all NASCAR race scanners and most airline audio systems.
The John Deere Noise Canceling headset is not designed for use in environments that generate reactive or impulse noises such as gun ranges. Caution should be exercised by limiting prolonged exposure of any noise even while using active noise cancellation systems.
Full-size swivel earcups, angled headband, rugged protective carrying case, detachable audio cable, 1/4 " and dual pin audio adapters [fits most commercial airlines].
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