Grado Labs SR60

Tour

The Grado headphones are all black. Their cups have large, circular foam pads covering them, and open backs. The open backs are covered by a grate, making the sound element easy to see, but a bit hard to get at. The cups rest in a plastic C-shaped housing, allowing the cups to tilt back and forth. This part is attached to the band by a metal rod. These metal rods both allow the cups to rotate in a full circle and to stretch away from the band, in order to accommodate larger heads. The band itself is metal, and covered with leather.

In The Box

In the Grado SR60 box, you’ll find a dearth of interesting things. Other than the SR60s themselves, all you get is a sole 1/8-to-1/4-inch adapter.

Durability (3.63)

Overall, the Grados SR60s aren’t the most durable headphones. They start out at the plug promisingly enough, with a ridiculously good cord guard that should keep the cable safe from any amount of bending, pulling or other rough treatment. The cord itself is great too; the tough plastic coating means that you will never have to worry about it snapping or tangling up on itself. The neck split is also really heavy duty. On the other side of the neck split, however, things take turn for the worse. The thinner cable on the other side of the neck split feels loosely wrapped around the internal wires, and we are concerned that this cable could be damaged by an overly sharp bend or twist. Because it’s relatively hollow, the cable can bend and twist around quite a bit at the neck split.

The cable is a bit minor compared to how the cups are connected to the band. The cups sit in a plastic half-circle, on two pins so it can rotate. This plastic ‘C’ is incredibly flimsy, as are the pins that grab onto the cup. The other issue lies in the plastic part at the end of the band, which the cups’ metal rods slide through. Essentially, this plastic box attempts to join two pieces of metal; any bending will but the brunt of the stress on this brittle plastic.

Aesthetics (3.00)

These headphones are no blue-ribbon beauties: they look really cheap. The foam ear padding is vintage 1980, as is the lettering and plastic quality. That being said, we do live in a day and age where such an aesthetic, through some miracle of irony, is considered attractive by many. If you view it in that light, they actually do have some charm to them. If you’re in this mind set, feel free to add your own three or so bonus points to this score. Chances are, however, that many people won’t like this particular look (although the sliding ear cups do modernize the look a bit). Overall, while the SR60s are kind of ugly, it’s a cute ugly.