A New Epoch!

Brooklyn-based Grado Labs has been in business for 64 years, manufacturing moving-iron phono cartridges, headphones, and, for a while, even a unipivot tonearm with a wooden arm wand, as well as the sophisticated, S-shaped Signature Laboratory Standard arm.

- Michael Fremer

The company’s founder, Joseph Grado, who well deserves the appellation “legendary,” died in 2015, at the age of 90. He began as a watch builder at Tiffany & Company, and started making phono cartridges in 1953, as the hi-fi boom took off. He retired in 1990 and sold Grado Labs—still located in the same Brooklyn building where he’d begun in 1953—to his nephew John Grado Jr., who by then had put in more than a decade at Uncle Joe’s company, pretty much running it after Joe had returned to what he liked best: inventing things.

 At the time, Grado Labs manufactured some 10,000 cartridges annually. It’s not as if Joe’s new invention—three models of costly, handmade headphones—was an attempt to diversify because the cartridge business was bad. Joe also invented the highly regarded, limited-edition Grado HMP-1 omnidirectional microphone, a favorite of veteran recording engineer Peter McGrath, who is currently director of sales for Wilson Audio Specialties. The headphones, hand-built by Joe and John, were an immediate success among audiophiles and recording professionals. Grado Labs’ move into headphones has proved prescient, given the subsequent boom in that market, and with the vinyl resurgence, Grado today is poised for continued growth in both arenas, even as John Grado reaches retirement age (though it’s doubtful he’ll retire anytime soon). There are more Grados in the pipe line. Recently, it was announced that John’s sons, Jonathan and Matthew, have joined the company.

The Core Business Expands