The bowls are crucial to soundstaging and sound positioning. As they get older, they get softer and they place the driver closer to your ear. As a result, sound is more congested and more frontal. Some people also wash the bowls as they get dirty, and this also makes the bowls very soft and again you get congested and more frontal sound. If you can live with those effects, you can wash your bowls when they are new to soften it and makes it more comfortable on your ears.
This is how you wash the bowls:
1. Remove the bowls from the housing
2. Wash the bowl in a solution of water mixed with shampoo. Don’t twist or pull the bowls as you may break them. What you do is you squish the bowls inside the soapy water for 1-2 minutes.
3. For rinsing, squish the bowls in clean water. Keep running clean water in the rinsing station while you are doing this. Rinsing is done when you don’t have any more soap coming out from the bowls.
4. For drying, just leave them outdoors for a few hours, but don’t put them under direct sunlight.
5. Enjoy a clean, softer, and more comfortable Grado bowl.
The drawback to this is if you find out after washing that the soundstage suffers too much because the bowl is too soft, you have to purchase new bowl pads.
