Brooklyn's family-run audiophile favorites Grado Labs is not a company to blindly follow the latest trends, focusing instead on consistently delivering top-notch sound. For its new Statement X Series, the headphone veterans embrace the beauty of exotic woods while also going big on drivers.
Grado says that it has only released four generations of headphone drivers in the last 30 years, rejecting yearly update cycles in favor of waiting to install major upgrades.
The Statement family has two members, both benefiting from new X Driver speakers but the flagship GS3000x flavor – which the company describes as "the best sounding headphone Grado has released in our seven decade history" – rocks the largest dynamic transducer to feature in a pair of Grado headphones to date, at 52 mm.
The speaker design benefits from a more powerful magnetic circuit, the effective mass of the voice coil has been lowered and the diaphragm reconfigured, and the drivers for the open-backed flagship have been "specifically tuned to embrace the tenacity of cocobolo and precision of metal."
The heavy tropical hardwood not only looks gorgeous but is reported to boast sonic properties bursting with texture and emotion, and has been partnered with a metal inner chamber to add more mass to the equation for improved sound delivery.
The 38-ohm headphones come with huge ear cushions for long-listening comfort and offer a generous open soundstage from the matched drivers over a frequency response reaching down low to 4 Hz right up to 51 kHz, and a sensitivity of 99.8 dB.
The latest installment of Grado's decades-long GS1000 range of over-ears sees the warm tones of mahogany joined by ipê wood for the first time, which is said to bring improve "the structural integrity of the sound passing through the grains of the housing."
The GS1000x headphones feature matched 50-mm X Drivers, again tuned for the specific woods employed in the design, and offer a frequency response of 8 Hz to 35 kHz and the same 99.8-dB sensitivity.
Both members of the Statement Series are hand-assembled in Brooklyn and also benefit from a super-annealed copper 12-conductor cable that "reveals even more of your music with improved purity."
The flagship GS3000x is priced at US$1,995 (or $2,165 with balanced XLR connectors), while the GS1000x comes in at $1,195 (or $1,365 with balanced XLR connectors). Sales are due to start in September.
Product page: Grado Statement Series
