Grado Hemp (2020) Measurements, Reviews, and Impressions

Can any Grado Hemp owners please test out a few songs for me to see if they are suitable for the headphones? Thank you very much

Shiny Stockings - Dexter Gordon
Boat To Sail - Carpenters
Wide Open Spaces - The Chicks

 

@Shoop_Ah you made three posts in row in this thread within 35 minutes.

Read this and post in here.

 

Sorry for the shitposting

 

Read this a lot.

 

First what @YMO said will be very helpful for your survival in this forum.

That said, you need to describe a few more pieces of information to get good answers.

• Previous experience with Grado or audiophile-grade supra-aural headphones (hopefully open-back)
• Specific descriptions of subjective terms you intended
• Amps and dacs you're considering. Hemp was a little picky to get the amping right.

If you're already familiar with what Grado headphones can reproduce, I can comfortably say Hemp has the most aggregable tonal balance than any other grado products we can get today. And technicality is well above the 75 percentile in the Grado spectrum. Members I highly trust preferred GH2 or RS2e with TTVJ pads (which combinedly far exceeded Hemp stock price) to Hemp. So it could be another consideration. I prefer Hemp to any of prestige lineup (SR-xxx) in any criterion.

Eventually I had to let my Hemp go. Because.. I couldn't bear Grado ergonomics + Clear Mg simply did everything I wanted from Grado without compromises.

 

Thank you very much for your reply. I will take some time to familiarise myself with the regulations here. Sorry for the disturbance to some other user(s).

I do not have any experiences with Grado headphones unfortunately. I am quite new to this hobby and I have not demoed that many headphones. My only open-back supra-aural pair of headphones is the Koss Porta Pro, which I really like. I like the warmth, but I am not treble sensitive and I can deal with more treble focused headphones.

I currently have an iFi Zen Dac, which is not very powerful and quite warm. That should be powerful enough for the Hemp, but I don't know if the synergy is good.

 

A couple of thoughts.

1. Porta pro is very very very different from Grado house sound. Based on your description, any Grado must be very risky choice. If you want gambling, great, and go experimenting yourself (that's part of fun in this hobby). If not, my recommendation is to avoid Grado thoroughly. Hemp could be the least harsh sounding, but still it's around HD600 at least, which is way north to Koss.

2. Hemp is super efficient. I used my amp NOT to amplify signal but to attenuate. So, important factors include (1) gain is low enough, (2) volume pot behaves nicely around 8-9pm range or even earlier (almost synonym to $$$), and (3) amps can generate beautiful sound in low level (most amps start to rock at higher levels).

 

Has anyone here tried the Shipibo pads on the Hemp? Someone on HF is selling a pair, and I'm wondering if they will sound better than the F Cushions I'm using, while maintaining better comfort over the stock pads.

I know @Philimon said he'd try them on a non-Hemp, but not sure if they're a decent match for the Hemp.

 

I'm considering buying a new pair or RS2e. Do you think it can actually compete with a pair of hd650?

 

You might want to get the RS2X, this just came out from Grado.

 

awesome ill try to grab a pair once it arrives in canada. says mid-november avail in USA so I guess in Canada it will be early 2022

 

From a technicalities standpoint I'd say the old RS series cans (haven't tried anything past the i series for RS) eke out a lot of detail and texture comparable to the HD650 but the voicing can be really irritating to some. Voicing might actually make it sound like there's more macrodetail, in hindsight? Better bass quality than the Senns but worse extension if that counts for anything, and the imaging is properly nonexistent-- you can get beautifully cohesive and fleshed out headstage on the HD650/600 but the non-massive Grados generally always sound like mush in terms of imaging. Like the instruments are all in superposition basically.

 

I like the superposition comment. That's spot on, which is funny when talking about superposition and kind of makes my head feel funny.

Schrödinger's headphones indeed!

 

Or in less needlessly shmancy speak: the whole orchestra is all getting very cosy with one another

 

Late to the party here, but I have been using the Grado Hemp for a few months now. I've really come to like and appreciate it in the current headphone landscape.

I actually have three pairs of Grado Hemp on hand at the moment. I'm not fully aware of the different versions out there (are there 2 or 3?), but my first pair had the newer X-series cable but was before Grado moved the Hemp from 'limited' to one of their Reference Series offerings (https://gradolabs.com/collections/reference-headphones). My second pair was the first version (I assume), as indicated by its rubber sheathed cable. My third pair was bought new directly from Grado after listed as a now standard Reference Series headphone.

Of note here:
- The first 'limited' version (rubber cable) sounds the darkest. It sounds veiled compared to the other two. It's really mellow, almost muffled sounding. I don't like it much.
- The second 'limited' version (X-series cable) sounds quite a bit more high fidelity compared to the first version. It has a notably greater sense of extension in the highs, like the "veil" was lifted. Its lows seem tighter. The differences are significant enough that I doubt they're due to merely a difference in cable, cup variation, or general unit variation - I suspect the driver is different, but some may know more on this and I may be wrong. But overall, it sounds much better to my ears. This was my first pair and I came to really like the Hemp because of this version.
- The third 'standard' version sounds like the second 'limited' version, but with even greater clarity and notably wider soundstage. This version sounds really good and fixed the only issue I really had with the second version - a kind of flat-ish soundstage in terms of left-to-right width. I don't know if it's unit variation, or further improvements by Grado when moving it from a 'limited' version to the now 'standard' version among the Reference Series offering, but I am very happy I have this headphone.

Interestingly, I had the RS2x (with flat pads) for a short time to compare to the second 'limited' version, and I ended up preferring the Hemp, even though one of the notable differences was the RS2x had a better sense of soundstage width. So I am glad I got the third pair, as it really fixed the main fault I had with the second version - a flattened left-to-right image. I could believe the standard Hemp headphone has the same driver as the RS2x with a different tuning.

My main headphone had been the HD600 (and sometimes HD6XX) for years. I find myself going for the Hemp consistently lately, as it has a very even sound, fantastic bass, very behaved highs (very listenable, non-fatiguing sound), and a great sense of clarity or dynamism over the HD600. One of my favorite things about the HD600/6XX is how clear, resolving, and detailed it is while not being fatiguing. But I always want a little more dynamism, and at times intimacy - the Hemp does just this.

Edit: Also, why do I have three Hemps? One I bought as a gift for a friend for a major celebration coming up, and the other two are because I knew I wanted to keep a Hemp as a mainstay but wanted to know the differences between the first version and the now standard version. So I won't have three for long.

 

Question for you - with the pair you bought from Grado after they designated the Hemp to the standard reference series (no longer limited), did it indicate as such on the box labeling?

Thank you btw, for your post - I experienced the Hemp headphones similar to you so far. I disliked the original release (w/rubber cables) of the Hemp - veiled..”like a wool blanket over the music all the time” even after it was allegedly burned in. But I really wanted a Grado with a fuller bass, something to compliment my RS1X. After coming across your findings, I took another stab at the Hemp, now getting one with the newer nylon braided cable that is used with the X series, and this iteration definitely sounds “right”, no veil…full bodied sound that retains smooth and clear highs. Definitely is now one of my favorites!