Joseph Grado, founder of Brooklyn’s high fidelity Grado Labs, died on Saturday at age 90. Grado, who was a master watchmaker, started the company in 1953 in the space that once housed the family fruit store in Sunset Park. Grado Labs began by making phono cartridges, and when Joseph’s nephew John took over the company in 1990 the focus shifted to their great headphones. (They still make cartridges, though.) The Grado family offered up these words on their website:
The Grado family holds Uncle Joe in the highest regard, and without him, not only would we still be working in a fruit store, but we would have never started making headphones.
Joseph Grado, you made music sound better. Rest in peace.
Watch a video tour of Grado’s Brooklyn labs, plus a 2003 Girlmore Girls clip where Dave Rygalski (Adam Brody) talks Grados, below…
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