ADVANCED MANUFACTURING · LIECHTENSTEIN
Neutrik
The little metal connectors that hold professional audio together
01 In brief
In 1975, Bernhard Weingartner set up a two-man workshop in a farmhouse in Schaan, Liechtenstein, and began making XLR connectors — the family that still anchors the company's catalogue today.
Its XLR cable connectors are known for a chuck-type strain relief — a collet inside the threaded boot that grips the cable — a principle that still ships in the current catalogue. Five decades on, the XLR, speakON, powerCON, etherCON and opticalCON families have spread from recording studios to stadium stages, broadcast vans and industrial machinery.
02 Why it's interesting
- 01 From the first million connectors sold by 1983 to the billionth in 2015 — a thousandfold increase in thirty-two years.
- 02 The product timeline reads like a history of professional audio: speakON in 1987, powerCON in 1996, etherCON in 2001, powerCON TRUE1 in 2012.
- 03 Its fiftieth anniversary in 2025 was marked with a special-edition product line, down to gold-plated contacts and an engraved anniversary logo.
- 04 Everything from the founding workshop to today's headquarters has stayed in Schaan, in one of Europe's smallest countries.
03 How it works
A connector is a precision electromechanical part: contacts that must stay clean and true for thousands of mating cycles, in a housing that survives life on stage.
The XLR family explains the company's approach. A three-pin circular connector carries a balanced audio signal: one conductor carries the signal, one carries its mirror image, and interference induced along the cable appears identically on both, where the receiver subtracts it out. Neutrik's contributions were mechanical: the D series of 1980 standardised cut-out dimensions so that male and female chassis connectors could share the same panel layout, and the screwless designs that followed from 1984 did away with the small screws that assemble slowly and get lost on dark stages. A chuck-type strain relief — a collet inside the threaded boot that grips the cable — completes the design.
Each new family answered a specific weak point of live production. speakON, from 1987, made loudspeaker connections locking and safe at high current; powerCON, from 1996, did the same for single-phase mains; etherCON, from 2001, wrapped the fragile RJ45 network plug in a locking metal shell; powerCON TRUE1, from 2012, added make-and-break under load with IP65 weather protection. The opticalCON systems carry the same engineering into fibre optics, and the Combo connector of 1992 merged XLR and jack sockets into one chassis cut-out.
The business is manufacturing at Liechtenstein scale: design and production are anchored at the group's Schaan headquarters, with sales subsidiaries across Europe, America and Asia founded between 1986 and 2003. Alongside the NEUTRIK brand, the group runs REAN — launched globally in 2020 — and CONTRIK, added after the acquisition of Connex GmbH in 2021.
| Founded | 1975, Schaan, Liechtenstein |
|---|---|
| Group size | About 1,000 employees (company figure) |
| Connectors sold | One billion by 2015 |
| Key product launches | speakON 1987 · powerCON 1996 · etherCON 2001 |
| Group brands | NEUTRIK, REAN, CONTRIK |
Milestones, dates and company data from the Neutrik Group's official timeline, brands and company pages.
04 The organisation behind it
Neutrik AG remains headquartered in Schaan, and the Neutrik Group groups the NEUTRIK brand with REAN and CONTRIK. The company expanded through sales subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, China, Germany and France, and marked its fiftieth anniversary in 2025.
05 In the real world
It is a safe bet that any concert stage or broadcast studio in Europe contains dozens of them: XLRs on microphones and stage boxes, speakONs on loudspeaker runs, etherCONs on the audio network. The choice of connector is invisible to the audience yet helps decide whether a show stops mid-set — which is why a company devoted to such small parts could grow from two men in a farmhouse into a group with around 1,000 employees and sales companies on three continents. Demand has kept the production line busy throughout: by the time the billionth connector came off the line in 2015, a new high-bay warehouse with some 15,000 storage spaces had been commissioned to keep pace.
06 Can you visit?
No. The Schaan site houses production and offices with no public programme. Product data, drawings and support are available through the company's websites.
- Official site
- neutrik.com