Sheer clarity, full-bodied, good bass, excellent mids/highs, solidly-built heavy-duty cords and high quality sturdy gold-plated plugs (both the 3.5mm and 6.3 mm adaptor). This is a fantastic pair of 'phones, considering the design of the SR60s was conceived in the 1990s! I dug out some of my friends' old What HI*FI mags of 1996 and was pleasantly suprised to note that they were already selling them then. The so called 'retro' and WW II designs are actually quite cute and nostalgic. The universal-rotating and tilt adjustment smack right on the ear lobes is a good and functional feature - it allows the plane of contact with the ear to be optimally positioned, automatically. Good for all shapes of earlobes! (be it flushed or angled to the sides of one's head) Thoughtful!

plastic-ky, edges of the plastic parts are not all that smooth. They are a little rough to the touch. PVC headband fells coarse and unrefined. clumsy in re-adjustment of proper ear-height after each listen, due to 'twirling' of both L and R transducers,

Lovely superb sounds, neither too bass-heavy nor with 'stinging' irritating treble. Excellent reproduction of acoustic guitars (remarkable timbre of differing types of strings, whether nylon or bright-steel, folk, classical and flamenco guitars). Human voice's has plenty of emotion, 'feel' and very 'life-like'. No nasty nasal sounds. Brilliant job!

It cost me the equivalent of USD80.00 for this brand-new pair of SR60s (but i live in MALAYSIA! even with the 'hidden' cost of freight /shipping insurance /import duties etc all bundled in ... it is still a tremendous steal at USD80.00)

I now join the ranks of hundreds others of satisfied GRADO customers :-)

A GREAT investment, this! Highly recommended.

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cheapo 'phones supplied with my PC!. This is my 1st 'serious' headphones!

Awesome

Inexpensive,well-built,husky cord (unlike some models from Sennheiser),neutral and uncolored sound,fast and articulate bass,loads of detail in highs and mids,can be driven by any portable or other headphone jack due to high sensitivity.

Standard earpads are comfortable but are not the best choice for fidelity. Need to order some "donut" style pads from Grado,(or Headroom 1-800-828-8184) which are $15 a pair. Standard pads are only better if you plan on using these for outdoor activities while hooked up to a portable (stock ones are cooler and steadier on the ears).

These cans are an excellent buy for the sound they give. An easy upgrade is to buy the donut-earpads that are on all the upper-grade models. I think that the earpads may be the main difference between the SR-60 and the SR-80 that sells for about $30 more. The new pads alone extend the bass response and widen the soundstage by an order of magnitude. Then,they are not that far off in sound of the SR-model 325,overall. But,just as they are the sound is sweet,clear,meaty,and full of detail. I do not know how anyone can complain of a lack of detail in any Grado model,unless one considers the bloated,boomy bass delivery and artificial mids and highs of Sony models the epitome of "detail" of some sort. All the sound from Grado is lean and mean and accurate to the point of revelation. The SR-60 with the earpad upgrade may actually be superior to the SR-80,which some reviewers claim (I don't know why it would be so) sounds "murky" without a special headphone amp? These cans do not sound the least bit murky to me. Due to the clarity and the "up-close" soundstage they provide I think Grados sound the most natural playing small-ensemble or single performer type of music:jazz,rock,vocal,solo,chamber. Some other headphones such as the AKG K501 may seem more expansive and spacious with large-groupings such as symphonic or big-band stuff. But it all depends on how close you want to be to the performers. There are no more "involving" headphones than the Grados,and the SR-60 is the cheapest way to find this out. They make a great stocking-stuffer for the uninitiated! I am more than happy with this product.

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AKG K501,various cheap standards,Grado SR-325 (auditioned).

great, clean sound. cheap. comfortable.

none for 62-dollar headphones

These are great headphones. They are incredibly "open", which means they leak sound and let other sound in quite a bit. Many reviews here mention this openness as a weakness, but I would not call it that because it contributes to a much better sound. For example, you could eliminate this "problem" by cupping your hands over the ear-pieces--but then you are left with a boxy sound like the terrible Aiwa's listed above. If you want good-sounding headphones that block outside noise and don't leak noise, I think you are going to have to pay a LOT more than $62. (The only half-way decent alternative that I'm aware of are the Koss UR30's, which you can get for $30. Although these don't compare with the SR-60's in sound quality, they are okay for car-trips, etc., when there is heavy background noise).

So if you plan on doing listening at home and you don't have a headphone amp (if you do, it would probably make sense to get the sr-80's or more expensive headphones that have more bass capabilities), I highly recommend these headphones. I'm not sure what people who called these uncomfortable are referring to. They are a little tight out of the box, but once you stretch out the band (as the instructions recommend) they are great.

Also, a warning to those who like a lot of bass: you can probably get more bass out of many headphones on the market. My personal opinion is that the clean, accurate sound that the SR-60's reproduce is preferrable to the somewhat distorted, bass-heavy sound that many other headphones in the SR-60's price range offer.

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various sennheisers, koss ur30, aiwa hpx-222, many cheap headpones

beautiful detail, comfy for a Grado, easily powered by portable players, retro styling.

non-thumpy bass, cable could be longer.

When I first heard these, I was amazed that the Koss UR20s that I bought at BestBuy for $25 sounded better! The Grados sort of got relegated to the back burner, though I dragged them out every once in a while to test different CDs. The revelation came with a Celtic Frost CD (no secrets here!). I realized that while the Koss phones had a strong throbbing bass line, they also seemed kinda flat and dead. With the Grados, every note of music seemed lively and authentic; almost as if I were listening to the actual music live rather than a recording of it. The Grados in short exemplify the term "sound stage".

Sadly, I realized that what I had liked about the UR20s was thumping boomy overemphasized bass which robbed a lot from the midrange. (This is partially due to the UR20s closed design, and I do recommend those phones as a high value introduction to the closed headphone design.) The Grados have a refined and balanced bass which some may perceive as muted, but in our current bass addicted culture this is a distorted view. The Grados are musical headphones and will show you how music ought to sound. On any decent techno or metal album, the Grados will let you hear a texture and complexity to the music that thumpy bass will mask. (Note though that booming bass is all that some musicians have going for them! The SR60s will show this as well...)

Anyway, the phones sound better over time and the bass does extend a bit so break these guys in for a few hours before you pass final judgment. I've used these for other things besides Celtic Frost, from classical to jazz to Micky Hart's fine drum albums, and the Grados always show me details that I didn't notice on the stereo speakers (which cost 10X as much as the Grados!) The SR60s also sound just fine on portables, PC speaker phone jacks, and other low powered applications.

Weaknesses? Some complain that the new full coverage Grado headphones mute the bass and some commentators urge you to cut holes in em. As above, I think the bass is just fine, and the pads are comfortable when worn for a long while. Turning em into the traditional Grado donut pads may reduce this comfort factor, and frankly having headphones with a ragged hole in the pads just seems a bit low brow...

Other complaints seem to center on Grados comfort. This was never an issue for me, but if you have some sort of freakish misshapen head you may not find these entirely comfortable. And these are also tough to find! I live in NYC and could find no local vendors who carried Grados, even though they are made in Brooklyn! So if you want these at a decent price, you may well have to buy online.

Anyway, I think these are great phones, and they are a great intro to the world of high quality audio equipment. Grados are more refined than Koss, though Kosses make fine knockaround headphones. The SR60s are more balanced than Sennheisers, which are really meant for classical only fans. (The unfortunate HD500 Fusion phones which I owned briefly are the exception and evidently seem designed for those who like music to sound as if you were in a pipe and someone was playing music down at one distant end of it while also banging on the pipe at the same time; i.e. muted soundstage and rotten bass management.) And Sony phones are for those tin ears who think that a company that can make a decent TV can automatically make anything well...

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Sennehiser HD500, Koss UR20, KTX Pro, and Sportapro, various junky Sony phones.

Everything

None

Really reccomend this pair of headphones...they are really nice for the price......dude...can u get anything like these for $60....and look at how many people gave it good reviews. Compared to other headphones like Sony, etc, you could get about the same stuff...but for a much higher price.......so...do your self a favor and go buy one....I reccomend www.qaudio.com cause they have free shipping....and starting price of $59.99, which is awesome.

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Other grado's

Ive had a few headphones like AKG and Sennheiser (dont rembember the model tho but the AKG was expensice :/ )
These Grado headphones are the best i have ever had.
They sound great, what else is there to say....

Exact recreation of input signal.

short cord

If you hear something in these earphones that is not part of the music (i.e. humm, sibilance) it is your audio equipment that needs to be replanced. These are the best earphones you can buy for the money and they playback exactly what you give them. These are the most resonance free earphones I have ever had. They have smooth stringy bass, perfect soft but detailed highs, and the most neutral midrange I have ever heard. They are all neutral. It's like listening to your entire music collection over again because you hear things you have never heard before in your collection. These earphones are not good if you listen to a lot of mp3's because you will hear all of the imperfections of the compression. These earphones will compliment a good high end system.

Hey, if you live in Atlanta, go to AUDIO ATLANTA in Marietta. IT is a great store and they already had a pair of Grados out so I could take a listen. I love the place, good deals too. Got my diamond cones there.

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Sony MDR Series, Audiotechnica, Senn,

Truly,I mean truly,an astounding buy for serious listening for the budget-constrained.Well built in the USA.

For some,the problem of long-term listening discomfort caused by slight pressure on the ears or possibly by turning up the volume higher than is needed with such revealing headphones.

Beautiful sound from beautiful recordings. That is what you can expect from these cans,indeed. A plentiful cornucopia of pure untrammeled sound with undreamed-of levels of punch,dynamics,clarity,neutrality,and last but not least,soundstaging second to none. Now,some would dispute my claim that headphones give a great "soundstage". They would claim that any headphone can only collapse the sense of soundstaging one might expect from a regular speaker setup in which it is assumed that normal listening involves an audience seated out in tenth-row center,or wherever. But,it is simply ridiculous to assume that headphones could give you this same type of soundstaging effect. What headphones can provide is the opportunity to be transported up to a very elite and privelidged spot in the place of performance,namely,right into the midst of all the action rather than way out in front of it all. If you value soundstaging effects but do not like this idea then do not bother with headphones. So long as you compare the soundstage to the one you would hear if you were close in front of,or right onstage with the musicians,you will not be let down in any respect. These cans are universally regarded as an inexpensive,high-quality way to listen to music among those who value the type of peculiar, intensive,involved,revelatory listening they can provide. There are headphone amps such as the Headroom series that attempt to "improve" the soundstaging effects of headphones by providing a simulation of the cross-referencing of left/right sound information that one would experience with a normal speaker setup,and if you have to have this then fine. Go spend the extra money. However,I look at plain headphone listening as a "window of opportunity",not a compromise at all. Just know what to expect,that's all... Highly recommended for intensive listening!

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Various other headphones,and of course,conventional speaker setups.

Can rock but good for jazz and orchestral stuff too

Not so comfy-dinky foam earpads

After what-5 years-I haven't thought of replacing them but the foam earpads are about due for replacement. I will use the larger pads from one of the pricer models when I do so-this should help the comfort issue a bit. Dynamic sound with considerable bass slam but maybe not out of a Walkman or a consumer-grade headphone jack. It sounds very good on an Advent 300 receiver though--I think the Advent simply uses the main 15 watt amp to drive them and this works really well though you can hear some hiss. Probably a small, quiet tube amp would also work great.

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