GRADO GH3 HERITAGE SERIES HEADPHONES

HEADPHONES

Sound quality that is very ‘airy’, up-close, personal and right in your ears… involving, accurate... and, indeed, precise!

Many famous hi-fi brands were established in the post-war period in the United States, almost all of which were named after their various founders. Six or so decades later, most of the famous names are owned by conglomerates, and are not at all connected with their original founder in any way other than name. Most no longer even manufacture their products in the USA.

But there is one exception: Grado. This famous brand—and company—is still in the hands of the Grado family some two-thirds of a century after it was first established in Brooklyn, New York. And, what’s more, Grado is still hand-building its products in Brooklyn.

The Grado GH3 Heritage Series headphones are one of this company’s lowest-priced offerings.

They’re very light in weight (156 grams) and, as you can see from the accompanying photographs, are an ‘on-ear’ (technically known as ‘supra-aural’) headphone design.

The drivers in the GH3 are conventional dynamic types that are rated with a nominal impedance of 32Ω. Grado rates their sensitivity at 99.8dBSPL for 1mW of input. A claim of driver sensitivity specified down to tenths of a decibel may seem a trifle over-precise, but Grado then goes on to specify that the left and right drivers are matched within 0.05dB. The company seems very keen on precision.

But ‘nominal impedance’ is one thing, while actual impedance over the audio band is another. The headphones clearly have a very high impedance peak at 80Hz. When fed from certain home theatre receivers, this is going to result in an 8dB boost in output level at that frequency. With good sensitivity and a clear preference for low output impedance amplifiers, these headphones are best suited to being used with modern portable players.

As you might have guessed from the accompanying photographs, Grado uses wood in the construction of the GH3s. The bodies are made from Norwegian pine, so of course Grado titles its webpage for this model (and also for the more expensive GH4) ‘Norwegian Wood’. You should note that the wood isn’t just a stuck-on bit or an insert. If you peel off the ear-pads you’ll see that cases look to have been turned on a lathe. They are ridged cylinders because the driver units are open-backed. Consequently they give virtually no isolation from ambient noise in the environment in which you’re listening, plus it goes the other way too, so you’ll be sharing whatever music you’re listening to with anyone else within ear-shot in the same environment.

As for those ear-pads on the Grado GH3 that I mentioned in the previous paragraph, they’re made from foam rubber, and they’re both removable and replaceable. The ear-cups had sufficient travel on the headband to properly align with my ears, plus there was

a little left over (for bigger heads). The headphone band has a leather-look cover, which I suspect is a synthetic. The light weight of the GH3s means that they need not apply much pressure on your head in order to stay firmly fixed in place, a factor that’s important for on-ear models. I find that if on-ear models grip too tightly on my ears they begin to get uncomfortable after just a short a while. Just as importantly, I found that they still gripped tightly enough that they stayed firmly in place even when I shook my head around rather more than I’d ever be likely to do in real life. The result? I found these headphones comfortable to wear.

The cables are fixed. They join to both cups and are combined into one cable a couple of hundred millimetres under one’s chin. This cable is terminated with a 3.5mm plug, and a 6.35mm adaptor is provided.

Headphone storage is made super-easy and convenient by the fact that the headphone cups can rotate 90 degrees, meaning that you can pack them away without them occupying too much space… but you’ll have to supply your own case or bag, since none is provided.

LISTENING SESSIONS

I briefly tried the headphones on a Yamaha home theatre receiver, whose headphone output has a claimed output impedance of 100Ω, which is relatively low. The impedance mis-match clearly hurt the sound, not only boosting the bass noticeably, but also adding a level of harshness to music which was best avoided.

Switching to a Pioneer XDP-30R portable music player enabled the headphones to deliver highly satisfyingly-loud levels with Eminem’s Stan, even with the Pioneer player in its Euro-compliant low-output ‘Headphone mode’. I then gained much pleasure listening to all the other tracks on ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’. The bass was appropriately hip-hop-forward without being overblown. This album can easily sound tiring with ear gear that is too strong in the treble. Instead, these headphones kept everything very smooth and listenable, and that impression was maintained when I moved to a DAC/headphone amplifier with a higher output.

Moving to Tzimon Barto’s ‘Liszt Recital’ on EMI, this usually over-bright, sometimes slightly thin, recording is granted good body and weight by the Grado GH3s. In the quieter parts the complex sounds of the hammer blows on the strings were faithfully conveyed. Only the climax at the end of the second Hungarian Rhapsody ended up a little muddied, as though the drivers retained a little unexpended energy even after the signal relaxed. But this is a monstrously difficult passage.

The restrained—dare I say ‘mellow’—delivery usefully made such tracks as Lay Down (Melanie Safka) nicely listenable. Often with high quality gear the notable deficiencies due to the recording of massed vocals at the tail end of the 1960s are emphasised, making the track sound barely tolerable.

Overall, despite the open-back design, I wouldn’t describe the sound as very ‘airy’. It’s up-close, personal and right in your ears. That makes it involving, and it certainly seemed very accurate... indeed, precise.

Even though I complained that the headphones may not have managed the complexity of some of the Liszt, when moved to the classic Telarc 1812 Overture, I noticed that even when the orchestral bells kicked in towards the end, the coherence of the work was excellent, with the many, many dynamic peaks being discernible within the mix, ringing through the massed orchestra. The bass drum strikes earlier in the piece had good authority, without being overblown.

Importantly, I was able to achieve satisfying listening levels during the orchestral sections, thanks to the good sensitivity of these headphones. Yet when the cannons let loose at the end, the headphones coped well.

Likewise when the massed percussion strikes in the Schedrin arrangement of Bizet’s Carmen come in—well, if there was any dynamic compression, it was far from obvious.

There was good detail in the violins of the Schubert’s String Quintet in C (Alban Berg Quartet with Heinrich Schiff), without any sense of grating. The reverberation of the kick drum in Primus’ Southbound Pachyderm came through the mix very nicely, proving that the delivery was clean.

Finally, not once was there any mechanical noise from the headphones… no creaking, no sound of the cable chafing on nearby objects. All I could hear was music—plus room noise, thanks to the open-back design.

These headphones are not really suitable for use with things like AV receivers, since the high output impedances that are usually present on such components will mess up their tonal balance. But they will work perfectly when plugged into any high-quality portable audio player or any high-quality home headphone amplifier.

The Grado GH3 Heritage headphones delivered highly satisfyingly-loud levels with Eminem’s Stan