Grado Statement Series GS1000i Headphones

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Price: $995.00   

Product Feature

• Vented diaphragm
• Wooden air chamber
• UHPLC copper voice coil wire
• UHPLC copper connecting cord

Product Description

Listen and enjoy! What does the i stand for in the new GS1000i from Grado? Improved, that's what! Featuring a new species of handcrafted Mahogany earpieces made using an intricate curing process; Grado has been able to optimize the tonal quality. The GS1000i uses new upgraded dynamic transducers and the new 8 conductor cable design. All this, new wood, driver and cable designs result in improved control and stability of the upper and lower range of the frequency spectrum with both better supporting the GS1000i's new world renowned midrange.

Grado Statement Series GS1000i Headphones Review

As relatively few people are willing to spend this kind of money for a headphone, I figured I'd add my appreciation for this item. While I have not been able to indulge in multi-thousand-dollar headphone setups like the Sennheiser Orpheus or some of the Stax electrostatics, I do have a Grado RS1 and a Sennheiser HD600. I admit to being a big fan of Grado headphones, but when I first heard about the GS1000 my kneejerk reaction was to reject it as being just too expensive to consider. But the more I read about it, the more intrigued I got. Reading references to it as a "masterpiece," that it was a departure from the bright, up close sound of the Grados I was familiar with, and especially about its remarkable impression of spaciousness and, in what might seem contradictory, precise imaging, I became more and more interested in these headphones. I finally came to the conclusion that it had been a rough year, I had been a good boy, and I deserved a nice new toy, so abandoning my tentative plans to try out an AKG K701, I bit the bullet and ordered a Grado GS1000 instead.

I didn't take too much trouble analyzing its sound right out of the box. I hooked it up to an FM source and let it "burn-in" with about 8 days of continuous use, which approximated the 200 hours of break-in time generally advised for them to become optimum, and at that point I started trying them out in earnest with a great many classical music CDs, which is just about all that I listen to. They were mostly symphonic music, sometimes with operatic style voices or choruses, and a few smaller chamber ensemble recordings. Among my immediate impressions was that of an unusually wide dynamic range. A recording might start out quietly, and I would turn up the headphone amp (a Grado RA-1) to get a good sense of presence during that passage, only to be almost blown away when loud passages were playing. So that took some getting used to, as it was an aspect of my recordings that I had not experienced to such a degree. And indeed, the sense of spaciousness I'd read about was in fact there. Switching back and forth between my Grado RS-1 and the new GS1000, the RS-1 would sound quite confined by comparison. But the other striking aspect was that of imaging. In spite of the fact that I have owned some of the best headphones on the market, I had never experienced the sense of precise imaging that some high-end headphone enthusiasts talk about. I had come to the conclusion that the reason I hadn't was some deficiency in the electronics or cables I was using, or the fact that I myself, for some reason, was incapable of detecting or appreciating it. But through the GS1000, many recordings exhibited quite precise imaging that I could clearly appreciate like never before. A bank of violins clearly would extend from center left to far left, a brass section was clearly focused somewhere to the right of center, three singers in a trio were clearly and evenly spaced across the middle, with one of them dead center. And the GS1000 reveals a greater difference in the sound quality from recording to recording, also to a degree I had not known before. Some CDs simply did not exhibit that impression of spaciousness and others did, some to a quite remarkable degree. Some of the best sounding recordings in that respect turned out to be quite old recordings, like Louisville Orchestra Edition recordings from the early 1960s. So the fact that this spacious aspect of the sound varies to such a degree between recordings suggests to me that it is not so much an artificial acoustic effect applied equally to anything played through the GS1000, but in fact are attributes only revealed when they are part of the recordings themselves in the first place, in other words, not a phony effect but an accurate reproduction of something that is already there. Once again switching back to other high quality headphones in my possession for reference, the sense of space would be more confined and the imaging would be more blurred and less distinct.

So I'd have to say that I'm convinced of the unique quality of these headphones. Whether or not they are the most flat, neutral headphones available is not for me to say, but in the classical repertoire that I love to listen to they are a joy, and I consider it a real treat to slip them on at the end of the day and start playing all of my old CD collection through them. In their present configuration, with the large circumaural foam pads, they seem quite perfect to me. The idea of replacing them with flat pads, as one reviewer here suggested, seems pointless in my view. Why take something quite unique and wonderful, and turn it into something that we've seen before? I've already got an RS-1, and it's a great headphone. But the GS1000 is just....something else, and something special. A masterpiece? I won't say, but if it IS a masterpiece, like the Mona Lisa, then why paint over it just to see what Mona would look like in a green dress? It's just pointless.

ADDENDUM: I failed to take note that the tone colors and textures of instruments and voices are colorful and detailed, without sounding harshly over-etched. Woodwinds, brasses, and human voices have a nice roundness to them and a complexity of tone color, and the slight buzz of bows against string basses can be heard sometimes...presumably if it is actually there in the recording to begin with, but I can't really prove that. For classical music at least, I find it hugely satisfying to listen to, and can honestly say that my CDs have never sounded better to me than through these headphones.

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