This study investigates the effect of L2-English experience on the perception of the English tense-lax high vowel contrast. Experienced L1-Mandarin, inexperienced L1-Mandarin and L1-English listeners identified and discriminated synthetic heed-hid and who’d-hood continua varying in five steps of F1, F2, and F3 variations and seven steps of duration variations. The results show a strong reliance on formant variations by L1-English listeners; reliance on duration variations by the inexperienced L1-Mandarin listeners, and a more dominant reliance on formant cues than on duration cues by the experienced L1-Mandarin listeners.