Grado makes a Statement with headphones sporting largest drivers yet

Brooklyn’s family-run audiophile favorite Grado Labs isn’t a company that blindly follows the latest trends, but rather focuses on consistently delivering premium sound. For the new Statement X series, the headphone veterans take up the beauty of exotic woods and at the same time go big in the drivers.

Grado says it’s only released four generations of headphone drivers in the last 30 years, and rejects annual update cycles in order to wait before installing major upgrades.

The Statement family has two members, both of which benefit from the new X Driver speakers, but the flagship GS3000x – which the company describes as “the best-sounding headphones Grado has released in our seven-decade history” – rocks the largest dynamic transducer found in a pair of any 52mm Grado headphone to date.

The speaker design benefits from a stronger magnetic circuit, the effective mass of the voice coil has been reduced and the diaphragm reconfigured, and the drivers for the open-backed flagship have been “specifically tuned to integrate the toughness of cocobolo and the precision of metal.”

As well as looking beautiful, the heavy tropical hardwood is said to have sonic characteristics bursting with texture and emotion, and has been combined with a metal inner chamber to add bulk to the equation for improved sound transfer.

Equipped with oversized ear cushions for long listening comfort, the 38 ohm headphones offer a generous open soundstage from the tuned drivers, a frequency response that goes as low as 4 Hz all the way up to 51 kHz, and a sensitivity of 99.8 dB.

The latest iteration of Grado’s decade-long GS1000 over-ear lineup sees the warm tones of mahogany paired for the first time with ipê wood, which is said to “enhance the structural integrity of the sound penetrating the grain of the cabinet.” “

The GS1000x headphones feature tuned 50mm X drivers, again tuned to the specific woods used in the design, and offer an 8Hz to 35kHz frequency response and the same 99.8dB sensitivity.

Both members of the Statement Series are handcrafted in Brooklyn and also benefit from a super-annealed 12-conductor copper cable that “reveals even more of your music with enhanced purity.”

The flagship GS3000x is $1,995 (or $2,165 with balanced XLR connectors), while the GS1000x is $1,195 (or $1,365 with balanced XLR connectors). Sales are scheduled to begin in September.

Product page: Grado Statement Series