Craft Ears Four – Great Value, Quad Driver Customs
CE4
EU550
Pros
- Awesome Value Custom Earphone, High quality build production, attentive design style.
- Rich low end depth, intimate staging with solid musicality
- Clean and responsive signature character
Cons
- Upper end a little bright and fast at times
- No MMCX options so aftermarket choices limited
Straight out of Poland with passion, the talented Jedrek has created Craft Ears, a Polish based CIEM company. His varied experience as a drummer, music composer and producer has positioned him ideally to be able to build beautiful custom earphones that are versatile and able to put up with the rigours and high standards that musicians of the world demand.
Drummers need to stay on point, so having responsive, well balanced articulate earphones are essential when in a jam session. Keeping it tight and precise is the order of the day, so like a breath of fresh air on the earphone horizon, his flagship Craft Four CIEM is a welcome sight.
As Craft Ears specialises in custom earphones, a lot of care has to be taken to ensure a precise fit. This involves a number of steps, ensuring your ears are healthy and clean, getting a good audiologist to take deep full impressions or digital scans. Then building and crafting the CIEMs to match the silicon or scanned impressions before being able to see how they fit.
I have had a number of fit issues with CIEMs in the past as a lot of my followers know, so I was pleased to find out that Jedrek is happy to work with 3D scans of previous impressions so this can not only speed up the process but also you can save on impressions costs. To make this earphone style more a of a surprise we left the design choice up to the team at Craft Ears to decide, letting them go wild and use their artistic freedom to create a one of a kind custom crafted masterpiece.
Thankfully the earphonia.com team was not disappointed, as CraftEars elected to build an impressive refined design style, obsidian piano black with forged carbon fibre faceplates and containing sparks of copper leaves, relaying a deep rich elegant style with subtle explosive flare, inline with the signature tuning. Wow!
The dark chrome logo showing off the circular bold Craft Ears signature logo.
Build quality is excellent and more importantly the fit is perfect, resolving any concerns about coarse edges or wide nozzle bends that sometimes you get with CIEMs.
The seal is tight and isolating, yet doesn’t rub internally but feels comfortable and after a few moments they feel like a familiar extension of your senses.
Jedrek has many additional available options for shell and faceplate styles as well as the option to supply your own faceplate images for an even more custom unique earphone experience.
Each shell can be configured to your own design and preference, leaving unlimited possibilities only constrained by your imagination.
The build quality is excellent and the shells are smooth throughout with a 3 bore nozzle design to help to give balanced sound acoustics.
The shells had no imperfections at all that I could identify and the acrylic used is strong and has a high quality feel. Everything is really smooth and polished, no seam edges protruding.
As you can probably tell I am very happy with the build, design and fit of these high end flagship earphones. I see no way that this area could be improved upon and with the vast array of plate, shell design combinations, I’m confident all tastes will be catered for.
As Craft Ears only currently produce custom earphones, no tips are required due to the well made 3D printed CIEMs creating their own seal.
A small hardcase is supplied with a serial number on the top label, as well as a small brush cleaning tool supplied. This is more than sufficient for protecting your precious custom Craft Ear Four earphones for shipping and daily use.
The accessories/support included is:
- Hard carry case
- Cleaning Brush
- 2 Pin detachable cable
- 14 Day return option
- 60 Days Refit Guarantee
- 2 Years Limited Warranty
- Lifetime support
It would have been great to see a Pelican Case or Otterbox supplied but I can appreciate that the pricing is such good value already it would be unfair to expect a more premium case to be supplied.
Cable
The cable has a modest black style with a low profile right angled 3.5mm SE Jack that fit secure and paired well with the CE4 earphone.
Cable specification:
- 2-PIN connector
- Wire Color: Black
- Material: 4XC Copper with Silve plating wrapped around a Kevlar threaded core
Cable braiding is tight and very flexible, it has a slight soft flexible feel, a chin slider and memory wire included.
It has a right angled jack which has a little reinforcement to help stop any breaks due to over flexing, the signature produced using this cable is neutral.
I experienced zero microphonics and the shells always stayed securely connected with the 2 pin connectors.
