What happened to Grado's reputation?
1. Fashion - What people want - and value - changes all the time. The world of HeadFi operates much like a lava lamp with consumer interest changing what's hot and what's not on a regular basis. Often, the difference between being celebrated and road kill is timing. If you don't change with the seasons, you end up "in" and "out" of fashion as the wind blows and the tides change. A quick look at the Grado lineup shows that this is a company that likes to do one thing, making as few changes to the theme as possible. In some ways, the Grado product line is marked more by changes in accessories than radical departures from the classic theme.
2. Competition - The world of headfi is insanely competitive, with new players popping up all the time. Grado has always been a boutique firm playing David to some Goliath, but the number of Goliaths - and Davids - has mushroomed. The common matchup is between Grado and Sennheiser, but then there's AKG, beyerdynamics, Audio Technica, Denon, Ultrasone, Sony, et cetera. In the world of dynamics, pretty much everybody is selling Mylar drivers with shells, wires and cushions, but the number of choices - at every level - has exploded. Like Apple, Grado has always had to cultivate a loyal following of "true believers" convinced that their lifestyle brand - like a philosophy or religion - is "better" because of its distinctive approach. But there's nothing that says the look and feel can't be cloned or coopted and end up in brands that are less expensive, better marketed or more easily available.
3. Market Fragmentation - Even if Grado could convince everybody that it represents the iPod or iPhone of full-size headphones, it's a fight over an increasingly fragmented market. Even before Grado got into the headphone market, it had already split between full-size and portables. Along came earbuds, then IEMs, then wireless and active sound-isolating. Will the future see implants or just smart lapels - both of which eliminate headsets? As the market has splintered, Grado has had difficulty deciding whether to split with it or to remain an island in the stream. The iGrado represens Grado's forway into the world of sporty portables - but at a price point above that of the average knockaround. Even then, the size of the drivers and cups on the iGrado has left it an odd duck in a world of ultralight portables and IEMs. Grado's two IEMs - both of them dynamics - have become more of a draw to the Grado faithful. In a market where speaker giant, Klipsch, has had to struggle to remain competitive, Grado's premium-priced IEMs are yawners, enjoying a fraction of the success Grado has enjoyed in the full-size market. It came late to the party and it came light. While some love the "Grado sound" of these IEMs, their lack of success does little to enhance Grado's overall reputation. Me-too products tend to simply diffuse one's competitive edge.
4. Innovation - When Grado first jumped into the headphone market, the big question was: Paper or plastic? Today, dynamics are but one of several alternatives to electrostatics, including orthodynamics. But even within the world of dynamics, Grado's looks are not the only part of Grado that seems "retro." While Grado's technology has evolved - with wood and aluminum chambers, more transparent mesh, driver damping, better and thicker wiring, et cetera - Grado is losing a war of perceptions when it comes to "innovation." The HD800 and T1 claim to have "revolutionary designs." Grado's UHPLC wiring isn't silver. Its foamy cushions aren't leather. Its familiar headband isn't the acme of stability or comfort. Some of its plastic-housing claims are an exercise in posthypnotic suggestion. In a world where "newer" is often perceived as "better," you pay a price when your whole product line hearkens back to a look and feel that are "retro." Grado has done little to fight the suggestion that it's just reselling a leftover design and simply adopting some of the innovations made by others.
5. Price - It's not just that there are so many competitors in the sub-$100 market. It's that Grado has priced its flagship headphones so high that they not only narrow their appeal to the Grado faithful but elicit smirks and jeers from folks who resent the Rolls Royce pricing. There's a perception that Grado simply took the top prices of its competitors and added a premium for itself - in order to create the illusion that its headphones were better. The $1,400 HD800 and the low-grand price of the T1 are great examples of overpriced headphones but Grado had to own the category by charging $1,700 for the PS1000. The position of ultimate dusch, in the world of uber-expensive headphones, may have been taken over by Ultrasone but not before Grado held the title just long enough to have hurt itself. Unlike the HD800 and the T1, which introduced "new" types of drivers (if you can call the use of ring magnets a major "breakthrough"), Grado's big "innovation" was to double the copper in its cable and swap out mahogany mushroom tops with aluminum. Did this justify a $700 increase to its $1,000 GS1000, a headphone whose $300 premium over the $700 RS1 seemed to ride on some cushions and a muffin top? The only logic I've ever seen in pricing the PS1000 at $1,700 is the fact that for the same price you could buy a brand new RS1 and GS1000. When Ultrasone asked its customers to fork over $1,800 for its top dog, it at least gave them leather cushions. Doesn't $700 buy you something better than foam?
6. Hype - Every time a new product comes out, it creates its own hype cloud until a critical mass of people ask enough questions about the emperor's clothes to get it tagged as FOTM (flavor of the month). Usually, the death of one hype cloud coincides with the birth of another. Sometimes, though, the honeymoon can be over before you know it, especially when the newest flagship hits a wall of doubters from within that headphone's own community of the faithful. When your groupies start balking, you're standing on thin ice. Every major headphone manufacturer takes this risk when it decides to go for broke. A more careful step would be to raise the bar within the existing gaps of one's own product line. That way, if the thing is not a hit, it's also not a disaster for the whole product line. Such wisdom was lost on Sennheiser when the HD650 started a war with the HD600 crowd. It happened again at beyerdynamics when the DT990 took on the DT880. Grado did this with the rift between the new-and-improved GS1000 and the RS1, whose faithful fans refused to accept the GS1000 as a "better" headphone. In each case, the manufacture recovers its footing by releasing a new-and-improved headphone to its last new-and-improved headphone - like the T1 and the HD800. This would have worked if Grado had priced the PS1000 (whose sound effectively combines that of the RS1 and the GS1000) for $1,200 or $1,400. But when Grado demanded a near doubling of the price of the GS1000, a headphone that quickly ended up with more embittered Grado fans than groupies, many folks simply refused to play. When your faithful go back to a headphone you introduced more than a decade beforehand, it's more than just a slap in the face. It suggests that you've run out of good ideas and are simply cashing in.
7. DIY - This leaves us to the Modders. Behind every mod, there's a certain audacity, an audacity some have shoved in my own face on occasion. If, someone suggested, Grado headphones are that great, why would anybody need to mod them? The answer is a combination of love and criticism. Grado lovers love their Grados - the way VW lovers loved the Beetle or Mac people love their iPad. Modding your beloved Grado is a way of showing that you're in the club and you do, in fact, love this "member of the family." But it's also a criticism. Why, as someone once asked me, not simply buy a better Grado? The answer refleced in the decision to tweak or mod your Grado is that Grado either doesn't offer as much or charges far too much for someting that could have been done at home. If I can replace plastic with cocobolo and cable up in silver, while picking out the coolest leather for my headband - not to mention leathering up the pads, fully venting the drivers and redesigning practically everything from top to bottom - why not simply let Grado do it? The short and simple is this: Grado won't. Despite the high cost of Grado's best cans, there are simply some mods you can't from Grado, mods you have to do yourself.
Don't get me wrong. I love Grado. I wear 'em and I mod 'em and I buy 'em more than any headphone I've ever owned. Most of these issues are either not Grado's fault (competition, a more demanding public) or are self-inflicted wounds. This is not a business where you can snooze - or appear to be doing as much. Where the PS1000 failed to put out the fire, the HF2 hosed it down nicely. And why? Because the HF2 ended up costing less than an RS2. Grado came out with something new and made it affordable enough that the HF2 is one of Grado's biggest hits. Grado needs to win back its old rep by investing time and resources into pushing the envelope rather than palming it. Even then, there will always be a 12-year-old fanboy who thinks Grado is all washed up - like Apple. In 1994, I sat across from a man who was convinced that Apple was on its last leg.
That was before the iPod, the iPad, iTunes, Apple TV, the iPhone, the App Store, etc.
I wouldn't write Grado off, even if it could benefit from a periodic kick in the pants.
just kidding
