Gallery: Inside the Magical Room Where the Best Headphones in the World Are Made
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__"The Grado Towers"__ John Grado designed these speakers to use 32 stacked headphone drivers. They never made it to production, because a glowing review of the company’s SR60 headphones came out and business took off. “We couldn’t make things fast enough.”
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__Switcher Box__ One of Grado's engineers WIRED this up. No matter what source you're playing, hit a button and the system switches from tube to solid-state or vice versa. Grado uses it to ensure the phones are technology-agnostic.
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__1. Balanced Headphone Amplifier__ Balanced headphones use an individual ground wire for each channel. Grado will balance any of its cans for $150, but it gets only a few requests a year. They made this amp in house to test them.
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__2. Joseph Grado Signature Headphone Amp__ High-end audio gear often lacks a place to plug in headphones. That’s why people employ headphone amps. Grado made this one in the early ’90s. “We were trying to sell high-end headphones to people who didn’t have a place to plug them in.”
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__Micro Seiki DQX-500__ This ’80s turntable is special on its own, but Grado’s is outfitted with a tone arm designed by Joseph Grado—the company’s founder and John’s uncle—as well as a prototype high-end cartridge that’s set for production in 2015.
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Each of the plastic gimbal rings on Grado’s entry-level SR60s is drilled in the Grado family basement.
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The storage room used to have a different name: Jonathan’s bedroom. It’s where John’s son grew up, until the family had to move out of the building to accommodate the growing factory.
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Omega headphone stand
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You probably wouldn’t expect that this typical Brooklyn doorway was the entryway to audio nirvana, but it is.
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John Grado
