Love my GS1000s (which were TOTL when I purchased them in 2006). I listen through my McIntosh C22 IV.
Since I got them, I’ve auditioned TOTL cans from Audeze, Focal, Hifiman, Sennheiser, Stax (and newer offerings from Grado), among others, with various dedicated phono amplifiers in combinations costing up to $25K. Nothing I’ve heard makes me want to trade up, even to better Grados.
I’ve also been to Brooklyn’s Grado Labs a couple of times—a 30-minute bus ride from my apartment. A real hoot. (I think I was expecting a pristine environment with people in white lab coats and lots of electron microscopes.) But it’s a graffiti-covered brick edifice and a beat-up metal door, with a doorbell labeled “Grado Labs” in magic marker on a piece of tape.
Inside: dark cave of a place, crowded like a 1940s cobbler’s shop—but with piles of headphones, cartridges, and audio parts instead of stacks of leather and shoes. Couple of curt middle-aged women (smoking cigarettes, IIRC), listening to talk radio, assembling the stuff.
First time I visited, to get my cans fixed, I handed my precious GS1000s to one of the women and, after I explained what was wrong with them, said, “So this is where the magic happens…” She looked at me like I was an annoyance, scowled a little, and proceeded to handle my cans like she was changing a tire. But she quickly fixed them, handed them back to me, and wrote up a bill. In and out in 15 minutes, I left there somewhat dumbfounded that they could accomplish what they do in that environment.
Still love my GS1000s.