GRADO - SR80x - Prestige Series - Open Wired Stereo Headphones

Product Information

If you’re in the market for a limited edition Grado with gorgeous handmade craftsmanship and a fun and exciting sound signature, you can’t go wrong with the White Headphone. It’s great for pretty much anything you could listen to, but definitely excels where massive amounts of detail and crystal-clear imaging are a must. Grado did a great thing here. If I had a vividly subjective gripe, I’d want it to be shiny and lacquered. Beyond that, I don’t see any faults with the wood elements of this headphone. Even as long-term Grado users, it takes us a while to get used to them due to their thinness and overall shape, but it’s worth persisting. A few days of acclimatisation makes us more kindly disposed towards them, particularly as the new earpads cause a subtle shift to the balance of the SR325x’s sound, making them a less demanding listen. Plastic ear cup housings and fake leather headband padding finishes off what is quite conspicuously a pretty simple, low-cost construction. While we’d be happy to use them out and about if it wasn’t for the open design, they don’t will you to abuse them – some headphones claim you can stretch their headbands to within an inch of their life without damage. We wouldn’t recommend trying that here.

This is a Grado. It is very mid-forward and so well equipped for vocals. Grado likely always will be the go-to for this type of thing, if you want a smaller headphone. The Hemp is noticeably more forward than the Grado GW100 that I reviewed not too long ago. Every pair of SR125e headphones are still made in Brooklyn, New York, where the John Grado family have been making award-winning audio gear for over 60 years. Like all Grado headphones, the SR125e uses an “open-air” ventilated headphone design with large, non-resonant air chambers for a powerful and extended low-frequency response and a more open, spacious sound to your ear tips. The diaphragm of each speaker has been subjected to a special “de-stressing” process which allows it to provide more musical detail for an even greater soundstage during your listening sessions. A sturdy eight-conductor patch cable and ultra-high-purity copper voice coils give these phones a refined high-end, ultra-smooth and dynamic, yet tightly controlled bass.

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Drivers feature low-mass polymer diaphragms, neodymium magnets, and UHPLC (ultra high-purity, long crystal, oxygen-free copper) voice-coil wires. Of course, you have to provide the Grados with a quality signal. If that 3.5mm connection tempts you into thinking that a phone, laptop or budget music player are going to be ideal partners, you’d be wrong. These headphones will still sound acceptable with such sources, but we’d be looking at an outboard DAC of the quality of Chord’s Mojo for the laptop and phone, and at least Astell & Kern’s A&norma SR25 music player, if we want to hear the scale of the SR325x’s talents.

Size-wise, the Grado SR60e appear quite similar to headphones like Beats Solo 2. They’re on-ear, so not huge. However, these are not portable in the traditional sense. Screaming guitars and harsh cymbal strike equating to wince factor is a thing of the past. And if it is, somehow, still too much for you, the Hemp responds extremely well to treble EQ. Once you pull these babies from their cardboard prison, you’ll find a headphone that looks stereotypically Grado, but with a flourish. Two white earcups dominate the sides of the headphone, crafted from maple and painted a gorgeous, immaculate white.As I type this, Paul’s guitar sounds so nice, just a good amount of brightness and impact, without ever being harsh or annoying. Combine that with a dense sounding tonality overall from top to bottom and you get something like a mini Sennheiser HD6xx family tonal presentation. And damn…that is something we all want in a smaller headphone. Imaging