A designer who built his own hi-fi.

Erzetich is an audio company in the west of Slovenia, named after its founder, Blaž Erzetič — “his name explains the brand name,” as the Polish magazine High Fidelity put it in 2013. The spelling with “ch” belongs to the brand; the founder writes his surname with a č.

Erzetič’s own account starts in Slovenia when it was still part of Yugoslavia. Hi-fi, he writes, was out of reach because of high prices and import problems, so he built his own system and listened to it almost every day for two decades. He studied electronics as a teenager but made his career in visual work: he told High Fidelity he had worked as a designer, illustrator and photographer since 1998, and freelance since 1999. He also played guitar and, by his account, released four albums — one on the US label Wampus Multimedia, two on Germany’s Black Rain and one on his own label, Neversun — which gave him studio and live sound-engineering experience. He says one of his musical projects opened for Marilyn Manson in 2007; we have not confirmed that independently.

The audio business began in 2012. Erzetič told High Fidelity he “expanded into the production of electronic devices under the Erzetich brand” in February 2012, and the first archived version of erzetich-audio.com, from September 2012, announces “The website is online!” on 1 September that year. The limited company behind it, ERZETICH Produkcija podatkov in stvari d.o.o. — roughly “production of data and things” — was entered in the Slovenian business register in January 2014, according to the bizi.si directory, which draws on the AJPES register. The same umbrella still runs Erzetich Design, the founder’s graphic design, illustration and photography practice, at erzetich.com, a domain that predates the audio company by more than a decade.

Amplifiers first, then headphones.

Erzetich began with headphone amplifiers, not headphones. The 2012 website offered three — Bacillus, Bacillus Tilia and Perfidus — described as “high quality headphone amplifiers with specific rustic/industrial design,” each “carefully handmade and tested one-by-one.” High Fidelity, in a February 2013 review of the Perfidus that 6moons republished in English, recorded Erzetič’s description of the circuits: the Bacillus built around an AD8066 op-amp with a current buffer, the Bacillus Tilia around an OPA627, and the Perfidus as a class-A design with a discrete transistor buffer. The magazine called its review “the international début of the brand,” which then sold only direct, at €479 for the Perfidus.

The headphones came in 2018. Headfonics reviewed the Mania in September 2018 at €1,199 — an open-back dynamic headphone with hand-crafted linden-wood cups — and described it as the first of two headphones launched together, alongside the Phobos, a planar-magnetic flagship at €1,999. It called them “the company’s first foray into the headphone manufacturing business.” Later came the portable Thalia, which 6moons reported in 2020; the Charybdis, a €3,000 planar-magnetic headphone with CNC-milled aluminium cups, reported by 6moons in March 2023 with a matching Scylla amplifier to follow; and a Charybdis Gold, limited to 20 pairs at €4,500, with its aluminium parts plated in 24-carat gold. The amplifier range now runs from the €799 Bacillus II to the €6,000 Scylla, with the dual-mono class-A Deimos in between.

The names come from Greek myth — Phobos and Deimos, Scylla and Charybdis, Thalia, Medousa — and the signature material is linden, or lime wood. The company says it uses aged linden because the tree “is a symbol of our homeland, Slovenia,” and Headfonics repeated the point. Not every product keeps it: 6moons reported in April 2024 that the second-generation Thalia had moved to resin cups “to improve upon the prior wooden bodies,” with a carbon-fibre headband replacing steel.

Design and documentation.

Beyond the best-known headphone names, a group of smaller specialists builds around less common designs: planar magnetic drivers, true ribbons and electrostatic panels. The seven makers here span the United States, Europe, Russia and China, and most have a thin public record.

Three make planar magnetic headphones. Abyss, a division of JPS Labs, gives its address as Lancaster, near Buffalo, New York, and says it machines and assembles its headphones there. Kennerton, which sells planar and dynamic models, gave its location as St Petersburg on its website as archived in 2025. Sivga, best known for wooden-cup dynamic headphones and the parent of the planar brand Sendy Audio, is in Dongguan, in China’s Guangdong province.

RAAL’s website described it in 2007 as a company based in Zaječar, in eastern Serbia; its ribbon headphones, first sold as RAAL-requisite, now carry the RAAL 1995 name, and its American distributor, Requisite Audio, says they are handmade in Serbia. Warwick Acoustics, which makes electrostatic headphones and car audio systems, gives its address as the MIRA Technology Park in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

The other two work in central Europe. Ultrasone’s legal notice gives an address in Wielenbach, in Bavaria, and it speaks of “craftsmanship from Bavaria.” Erzetich, which makes the dynamic Mania and Thalia and the planar magnetic Phobos as well as amplifiers, gives an address in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, and says its workshop is “located in the Slovenian woods.”

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Made in the woods of Trnovo.

Erzetich says its products are manufactured in Slovenia. Its website describes a workshop “in the woods of Trnovo” where it makes its wooden parts — given its Nova Gorica base, that points to the forested Trnovo plateau above the town — and a second workshop nearby where it assembles the products, builds the electronics and does its development and testing. It says it sources metal cutting, painting and packaging locally but buys some components from Japan, China and the USA. That is the company’s account. One detail comes from outside: 6moons noted that a review of the original Thalia on the blog Audiophile Heaven showed a driver marked as coming from a Chinese supplier, a reminder that “made in Slovenia” here means designed, finished and assembled there.

The contact page lists Erzetich d.o.o. with a demo room on Kidričeva in Nova Gorica, on the Italian border, while the registered address is in nearby Vrtojba. We found no record of outside ownership in the sources we checked, and the founder still signs the company’s story page. Its stated principles are an “industrial/brutalist” design approach softened by artificially aged wood, products that can be repaired, and no animal materials; Headfonics noted the rubber-like headband strap on the Mania. In 2024 6moons counted distribution in 17 countries, and the website now lists dealers from Japan to the United States. Erzetich also issues gold-plated CD compilations of independent musicians, sold at cost.

For a design guide, Erzetich shows how a designer’s own vocabulary — myth names, linden wood, raw metal — can become a product line. Compare Meze, whose founder 6moons also noted has a background in graphic design, and Kennerton, which Headfonics used as a point of comparison in its Mania review. For this guide we use forest green, linden and brushed steel with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Erzetich’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.