Grado

Grado's story begins in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953, when former Tiffany & Co. watchmaker Joseph Grado left the jewellery trade to pursue a passion for audio, hand-building phono cartridges at his kitchen table above the family's fruit store. That kitchen-table beginning would go on to produce the world's first stereo moving-coil phono cartridge, patented in 1959, and nearly 50 patents across Joseph's remarkable career — enough to eventually earn him a place in the Audio Hall of Fame.

In 1990, Joseph's nephew John Grado took the reins of the company and made a defining decision: alongside the cartridges that had built the Grado name, he would build the company's first line of headphones, working at a bench with his wife, Loretta. That leap paid off spectacularly — Grado's open-back, dynamic headphones became genuine cult favourites among audiophiles, prized for their forward, natural, vocal-centric sound and distinctive retro styling, all built by hand in the very same Brooklyn building where Joseph once ran his kitchen-table operation.

Now in its third generation of Grado family leadership, with John's sons Jonathan and Matthew both involved in the business, Grado continues to hand-assemble every headphone and cartridge in Brooklyn — a genuinely rare thing in modern consumer electronics, and a large part of why the brand remains so beloved by generations of listeners.