Grado has announced two new pairs of wooden wired headphones in its new fourth-generation Statement GS1000x and GS3000x, with the latter housing Grado’s largest and most powerful driver yet.
The new flagship GS3000x is, according to Grado, their best-sounding headphone in their seven-decade history, which is quite the claim given how many great headphones they’ve released. It features a new 52mm speaker that’s been specifically tuned to embrace the use of the cocobolo wood and metal chamber it resides in.
The design of the speaker features a more powerful magnetic circuit, voice coil with decreased effective mass and a reconfigured diaphragm. All this tweaks and changes look to provide a performance that’s “teeming with texture and emotion”, the cocobolo wood’s sonic properties and innate mass are described as being the perfect partner for the new speakers. The wood finish on the earcups tend to vary from pair-to-pair, making for a more striking and unique look for each GS3000x.
The GS1000x’s design makes use of mahogany and ipê wood for the first time, and like the GS3000x, its speaker has been specifically tuned for the materials its used with. The former has been a long-standing material in Grado’s wooden headphones and phono cartridges, and Grado describes the process of combining it with a wood that hadn’t utilised before to incur a “delicate balance”. The mahogany brings warmth and texture to the GS1000X’s sound, while the ipê is said to improve the structural integrity of the sound passing through the grains of the housing.
Both the GS3000x and GS1000x have been assembled at the company’s base in Brooklyn, New York, and both also utilise the “improved” 12-conductor braided cable and new headbands. They retain that classic Grado look.
Price and availability
The Grado Statement X Series headphones go on sale in September, but there are two prices to take note of, one with Balanced XLR connectors and one without.
- Grado Statement GS1000x – $1,195 / £1,295
- Grado Statement GS1000x with Balanced XLR connectors – $1,365 / £1,495
- Grado Statement GS3000x – $1,995 / £2,195
- Grado Statement GS3000x with Balanced XLR connectors – $2,165 / £2,395
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
