Two founders, a new start and a stock of music stands.

König & Meyer — usually shortened to K&M — was founded in 1949 in Wertheim am Main, a town in northern Baden-Württemberg, by Karl König and Erich Meyer. The company says they began with music stands and measuring tools; a 2016 company article names the second product more precisely as thread gauges.

The story did not start in Wertheim. In a 2019 history the company says the founders started again there “after the original factory in Zella-Mehlis in Thuringia was expropriated under Soviet occupation.” In December 2024 the regional newspaper Fränkische Nachrichten, reporting on the firm’s 75th anniversary, wrote that the founders had already made music desks and measuring tools in Zella-Mehlis in the 1930s, and that the business was moved to Wertheim and begun anew in 1949. German Wikipedia’s article on Wertheim describes the same post-war pattern on a larger scale: between 1945 and 1950 several bigger firms arrived in the town, and glassmakers from Thuringia settled there because they were unhappy with conditions in the Soviet zone.

The start was small. The company’s own figures differ — its timeline gives ten employees in 1949, its 2019 history six — and it says the opening balance sheet totalled DM 7,850, with 29 music stands and 20 table music stands in stock at the end of that first year. By 1951, it says, the workforce had reached 60 and the range had grown to instrument and microphone stands. Microphone stands, the company says, were first made in 1954 in cooperation with Siemens, with a screw-in base and no boom arm.

Stands were not only for musicians. From 1962, according to the company, K&M supplied stands for hair-dryer hoods to household-appliance makers including AEG, Siemens, Philips, Krups and Rowenta — a business it says collapsed in the mid-1970s as blow-drying replaced the hood. By 1968, it says, 160 employees were also making stands for medical drips.

A folding base, a new socket and a studio standard.

The product that made K&M’s name is the 210/2 microphone stand. The company says Karl König developed a swivel joint for the boom arm in the late 1950s, and that his son Martin König — who had worked in the factory as a toolmaker, studied mechanical engineering and worked for Philips and BASF before returning as plant manager in 1965 — designed the new stand with him in 1966. Folding legs replaced the screw-in base and the socket was redrawn. It sold for 125 Deutschmarks, the company says; a telescopic boom followed in the 1970s as the 210/9. In 2015 the company said the 210/2 had sold “by the millions,” a figure it has not broken down.

Independent reviewers have treated the stands as a reference point. In a March 2013 comparison of microphone stands for Pro Audio Review, the engineer Rob Tavaglione called the 210/9 boom “a studio staple,” said he owned four, and found it “notably sturdier than most of the competition”; in the same issue Strother Bullins referred to “my standard beloved K&M boom.”

The range widened steadily. The company says it added keyboard stands, mixer stands and 19-inch racks in 1987, launched the five-guitar Guardian stand in 2011, holders for tablets and phones from 2011–12, a line of chairs for musicians and orchestras in 2017, disinfectant stands during the 2020 pandemic, and the Wind-Up speaker and lighting stands 24730 and 24740, with a double-crank mechanism and no cable, in 2022. Its catalogue today runs from music stands and drum thrones to speaker, lighting and monitor stands and shop fittings.

The best-documented design prize is the red dot award: product design 2013 for the »Elegance« 26200 microphone stand. The company says it was designed in-house by Klaus Werner, who joined in 2004, and that its tubes use a three-lobed profile instead of round tube, on a base with a steel core, a plastic cover and a rubber sole.

Stands, studios and stages.

Instrument stands are a quiet trade, and most of the names in it are owned by larger groups. Three of the brands in this set make broad ranges of stands for every instrument. Hercules belongs to KHS Musical Instruments of Taiwan, which says it has existed since 1930 and makes its products in company-owned factories. On-Stage is a division of The Music People of Berlin, Connecticut, which says it was founded in 1979 and is now “an Exertis | JAM business.” König & Meyer says it was founded in 1949 at Wertheim am Main, in Germany, by Karl König and Erich Meyer, and that almost all the metal and plastic parts of its products are made in-house.

Two grew up around keyboards and the stage. Ultimate Support says its founder, Darrell Schoening, built his first A-frame speaker stands in 1977 from salvaged hang-glider tubing; the brand now belongs to ACT Entertainment. Quiklok says it was founded in 1983 between Castelfidardo and Recanati, in Italy’s Marche, and that its first products were the QL/606 and QL/642 keyboard stands.

One is a drum-hardware specialist. Gibraltar was among the percussion brands that Fender’s KMC Music sold to Drum Workshop in January 2015, Music Inc. reported, and it came under Roland when the Japanese company bought DW in 2022, MusicRadar reported.

The last is a wall-hanger maker. String Swing says it was founded in 1987 by Paul Thieman and Anne Tainter, who ran a small dairy farm in Elroy, Wisconsin, and that its entire product line is still made in that state.

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.

Two families, three generations and one town.

K&M has stayed with its founding families; we found no record of a sale in the sources we checked. The company says Martin König succeeded his father in 1968 and Brigitta Meyer succeeded her father, Erich Meyer, in 1987. In August 2005 a new management team took over: Martin König’s daughter Gabriela König for sales, marketing, IT and controlling, and Heiko Wolz for production. The company’s imprint today names them as managing directors of König & Meyer GmbH & Co. KG, Wertheim. In April 2015 Martin König received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Musikmesse International Press Award at the Frankfurt Musikmesse, the company reported.

On where things are made, the company is specific. It says that “almost all metal and plastic parts of our products are manufactured in-house,” calls this “Made in Germany production,” and in 2019 described open days at “all three plants.” It lists about 300 employees, EMAS environmental registration since 1998 and ISO 14001 since 2000. Fränkische Nachrichten reported in December 2024 that a new powder-coating plant had gone into service at its second plant in Wertheim’s Bestenheid district, that the firm was training 29 apprentices, that sales for 2023–24 were level with the year before, with growth from OEM and online business, and that management said it stood firmly by Wertheim.

For a design guide, K&M shows how a plain industrial object can become a brand through a single model number repeated for decades. Compare Ultimate Support, the American stand maker built around aluminium, and Sennheiser, another German audio family business. For this guide we use stand black, chrome grey and a signal red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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