We had two pairs in the office and modded one and not the other. In a blind test two of three actually preferred the non-modded 555's. Our test wasn't great tho

We had two pairs in the office and modded one and not the other. In a blind test two of three actually preferred the non-modded 555's. Our test wasn't great though, 10 seconds of a relatively low quality mp3 and none of us are audiophiles, though the one of us who is the closest to being an audiophile was the one who preferred the modded headphones so, take that fwiw. If you're going to do it, I found that you have to pull hard, as in really, uncomfortably hard on the foam padding to get it off. It does come off though, and everything went back together fine.