A Sunset Park-based audio legend, now in its seventh decade, plays perfectly for a vinyl-hungry marketplace

by matt Scanlon

In 1990, Joseph Grado and his son John were staring at what looked an awful lot like the abyss—the end of one of the most prestigious audio manufacturing businesses in the nation. Their family company, Grado Labs, started on a quiet stretch of Sunset Park 7th Avenue in 1953, was on the leading edge of the then-budding audiophile industry, and Joseph would go on to patent the nation’s first stereo moving coil phono cartridge. Applying skills he learned as a watchmaker at Tiffany & Co., he replaced cartridge mass production techniques of the day with a process that would look more or less indistinguishable from that on jeweler’s bench, in which hand-assembly and exhaustive testing were de rigeur. Response to Grado’s fanatical attention to detail and the resulting sonic quality eventually led the company to a manufacturing high point of 10,000 cartridges per week in the mid-1970s. The advent of compact disc technology, however, did its damage there as it did in many turntable-related businesses, and by the last decade of the century, yearly sales were down to fewer than 12,000 cartridges.

There was hope, however, in the form of a product the company developed in 1989, an openair design Signature Series headphone that John and Joe developed (though by that time the latter was retired), one that was hoped would break new ground in terms of bass response, harmonic accuracy, pitch control, and overall dynamics. And as with cartridges, the secret was as much the painstaking process of assembly as it was individual component selection.

“I just don’t think other manufacturers typically went through the expensive and extensive steps of assessing the sonic impact of everything from bonding agents to headband assembly,” John explained. “Simply everything was taken into account. One critical thing to remember in headphone making is that every component has a different resonance frequency, which essentially means that each piece in each headphone responds to driver sound waves and can introduce distortion, so the process of establishing the resonance frequency of every component and reducing distortion so you get the cleanest possible sound…well, it’s painstaking.”

Over time, and in what John explained was a “natural” growth process, conspicuously lacking traditional advertising methods, the headphone business became a game changer for the company, to the point now where Grado makes nearly 160,000 each year in four model lines (Prestige, Reference, Statement, and Professional), along with an in-ear (earbud) series. Part of the cult-like status the company has acquired has to do with its insistence upon wired connectivity (no Bluetooth tech here yet) and an eclectic selection of manufacturing materials, including specially cured mahogany bowls and slightly distressed leather. There was even a Bushmills Irish Whiskey series that featured reclaimed whiskey barrel wood, and the participation of noted and restless audiophile Elija Woods. The actor described “an expression of music through the headphones that was extraordinary,” joining a chorus of genuflecting reviews, including the site techradar.com describing Grado’s model GS1000, as “possibly the finest electricity-to-sound transducer in the world.”

Making among the finest audio products in the industry would likely have been satisfying enough, but a small piece of marketing luck helped provide additional propulsion…the unexpected reascendance of vinyl in the new century.

“When we hit bottom in 1990, I don’t think anybody here expected that we’d still be making phono cartridges, but now I don’t see an end to the vinyl renaissance,” said John. “There’s a whole new generation that, in effect, regards turntables as new technology. We also have the older generation, of course, that has a collection of albums. Plus, the exclusivity mentality in audio gear has disappeared, one in which you feel you simply have to commit to one format or another. Now, we live happily in a world where you download and stream, but also play your vinyl and CDs.”

Part of the reason that cartridges such as the Grado Statement Series Statement1 can fetch $3,500 (though Prestige Series models start as low as $90) is because the company has developed a proprietary design that adheres to neither the moving magnet or moving coil choices typically available.

“We call it a flux bridger design,” John explained. “In which the coils don’t move and the magnets don’t move. People would need a magnifying glass to see our componentry variation, and the result is a cartridge that stand up to a lot of wear and is able to play a great range of records in a great range of conditions.”

Described by the company as “a derivation of the moving iron principle which features patented optimized transmission line cantilever technology and a pivoted fixed axial stylus-generator module,” along with the flux-bridger generator system, cartridges are moving briskly through Grado’s small manufacturing facility, still located in the family-owned, three-floor Sunset Park row building.

Asked just how much of the 310 million-unit world headphone market the company is capable of biting into, given the small site, Jonathan Grado, John’s son and the company’s vice president of marketing, responded with a statement that might at first blush seem a boast.

“It sounds odd, but we don’t actually look to other manufacturers for design cues or to see where markets are trending,” he said. “I was raised to think that we really don’t have competitors, not because we’re too good for other people, but because we really have blinders on…we are in our own little world. Other companies can do whatever they want and it really won’t affect what we’re doing. When the audio port disappears from devices and everything goes Bluetooth, we will respond, sure, but other than that, we focus so much on the sound that we just do not care what other companies are up to.”

As far as future sales are concerned, the younger Grado explained that growth was always welcome, but not at the expense of proximity to manufacturing, which means the business will remain firmly planted in Brooklyn.

“It’s funny to watch this evolution,” he explained, “…in which national businesses now adopt these one- or two-person Brooklyn outposts because it’s good marketing. We were lucky enough to stick to the borough when it wasn’t the cool thing to do, and that has turned out in our favor. Living and working here keeps us close to the product; if we were based here but nothing was made in the building, there’d be a space between my dad and the end product, and I don’t think there’d be the kind of quality you hear as a result.”

Grado Labs
4614 7th Ave. / 718.435.5340 / gradolabs.com