Inside Grado Labs: More Than 70 Years of Audio History in Brooklyn
Some audio companies have history. Grado Labs still works inside it.
A recent video, “Hi-Fi Legend Hiding for 70 Years in a Brooklyn Townhouse,” offers a fascinating look at one of the most unusual companies in high-end audio: a family-owned manufacturer that has spent more than seven decades building audio products in Brooklyn, New York.
Grado Labs was founded in 1953 by Joseph Grado, initially producing phono cartridges. The beginnings were remarkably modest — cartridges were assembled at the family kitchen table before growing demand led the business into the Grado family building on 7th Avenue in Brooklyn. That same building remains at the heart of the company today.
Joseph Grado became one of the important figures in the development of high-fidelity phono cartridges and was later inducted into the Audio Hall of Fame. But as the audio industry began changing in the late 1980s, Grado also began exploring another category that would eventually become inseparable from the company name: headphones.
From Cartridges to Headphones
Grado's first high-end headphones arrived at the end of the 1980s with Joseph Grado's HP1000 series.
When his nephew John Grado took over the company in 1990, headphones became an increasingly important part of the business. The early SR models followed, eventually developing into the Prestige Series and establishing the open-back design and immediately recognisable appearance that many listeners now associate with Grado.
One of those models, the SR80, would become particularly significant. Introduced in the early 1990s and continually developed over subsequent generations, it became Grado's best-selling headphone and for many listeners their first introduction to serious open-back headphone listening.
Wood, Metal and a Different Approach to Headphone Design
Grado has rarely followed the direction of the wider headphone industry.
While much of the market moved toward increasingly enclosed designs, extensive electronics and, eventually, wireless technology, Grado continued refining the comparatively simple concept of an open-back dynamic headphone.
The company also became closely associated with wooden headphone housings. The RS1, introduced more than three decades ago, was Grado's first wooden headphone and became one of the defining products in the company's history.
That willingness to experiment with materials while keeping the underlying philosophy relatively simple has remained a characteristic of Grado through multiple generations of products.
Still a Family Business
Perhaps the most interesting part of the Grado story is not any individual headphone.
It is that the company has remained independent, family-owned and closely connected to the place where it began.
Joseph Grado passed responsibility for the company to his nephew John, and another generation of the Grado family has subsequently become involved in the business. Manufacturing and assembly have continued in Brooklyn rather than being transformed into the kind of large-scale industrial operation that might normally be expected from a globally recognised audio brand.
That makes the Grado factory itself almost as distinctive as the headphones.
In an industry built around constant technological change, there is something unusual about seeing modern headphones being created inside a building with such a direct connection to the origins of the company.
More Than 70 Years Later
Grado today is very different from the company Joseph Grado started at his kitchen table in 1953.
The range now spans affordable open-back headphones through to the Signature and high-end models, alongside the phono cartridges that began the story.
Yet many of the principles remain recognisable: relatively simple engineering, distinctive design, small-scale production and an emphasis on listening rather than specifications alone.
This video provides a rare look behind the products and into the history that created them.
For anyone who owns a pair of Grados — or has ever wondered why these headphones look, feel and sound so different from much of the market — it is well worth watching.
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