Looking for a good headset. These are my ideas, any suggestions?

[DownloadFailed]

Well recently my cheap, old pair of Philips circumaural headphones finally gave out after about 2 years of abuse. Before them I had a Logitech G35 headset that incessantly crackled in my ears and then broke at the little piece of plastic the phone swivels on, so I used that as a desk microphone while using the Philips ones for audio. It was a pretty strange sight to see.

Anywho, I'm fed up with not having sound (whoulda guessed?) and I'm looking around for a great sounding, comfortable headset with a mic that won't send feedback into my teammate's ears when I hit "Talk". I recently purchased a pair of Turtle Beach X12s (http://www.amazon.com/Force-Gaming-Headset-Amplified-Stereo-Pc/dp/B005DQG0BO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352246183&sr=8-1&keywords=turtle+beach+x12) from Amazon which I promptly sent back the very next day because they made my ears sore. Now I'm looking into a pair of Plantronics Gamecom 780s (http://www.amazon.com/Plantronics-GameCom-780-Surround-Headset/dp/B006ZS5ATM/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_i) as a potential replacement. For their price, they look fantastic. I'm also considering re-purchasing a pair of Logitech G35s (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104281) (I would never bother with wireless) because I'm upgrading my PC soon with just about all new parts, including MOBO, so it's possible the crackling was a hardware problem on my end. Maybe the new MOBO won't have that problem. Yes I also considered purchasing a sound card, but I'm not that much of an audiophile so that's a last resort.

In addition, Christmas is coming soon, so price is a bit more lenient than normal. Though over $160 is too much. What would you recommend?

[Rbstr]

I recommend splitting the mic and headphones to separate devices.
I don't like USB stuff either.

I don't really have specific recommendations except in that direction. A boom mic from new egg is sub $5. Passable headphones at ~$50 are out there as well.

[Vancha]

I was going to post the full-length shitty headsets picture, but instead I'll just quote the important part...

"Headsets are inherently shitty because they combine shitty headphones with a shitty microphone and cost significantly more than they would cost separately. Not only do you get worse quality for the price, but because you are combining more parts with shitty wiring, they are much more likely to break, and when they do, are harder to fix."

I suggest visiting head-fi and /r/headphones on Reddit, and then looking into decent desktop, boom or clip-on mics.

If you for some reason still insist on a headset after that, get a Steelseries Siberia V2.