An engineer’s idea and two investors.

Neutrik was founded in 1975 in Schaan, Liechtenstein. The Historisches Lexikon des Fürstentums Liechtenstein, the country’s national historical encyclopedia, names Bernhard Weingartner as the source of the idea and Gebhard Sprenger and Josef Gstöhl as the investors, and says the company began developing and producing connector systems for the audio industry in Schaan that same year. The company describes its start as a two-man business in a farmhouse.

German Wikipedia, drawing on a 40th-anniversary report in a German audio magazine, tells the origin story. Weingartner, an acoustic engineer from Tyrol, had noticed sound dropouts at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, caused by the DIN audio connectors used by Austrian television failing in the weather. The XLR connector was more reliable, but expensive and hard to get in Europe. In 1974 he began working on a cheaper, high-quality version, and the draughtsman Werner Bachmann joined him seven months later. English Wikipedia describes Weingartner as a former AKG engineer.

The company grew fast. The Lexikon says Neutrik moved into a headquarters in Schaan’s industrial area in 1983 and into a new building a few hundred metres away, with a new logistics system, in 2004. In 2000 it sold its measuring-instrument division to the division’s management; that business became the independent NTi Audio, German Wikipedia says.

Standards that started in Schaan.

Neutrik’s reputation rests on connectors that became standard equipment. Its own timeline lists the XLR D series of 1980, which it says were the first XLRs with the same mounting dimensions for male and female parts; a screwless XLR in 1984; and the smaller A series of 1991, whose first user, the company says, was Yamaha; it was offered with several grounding options to deal with the so-called pin 1 problem, in which a shield connection lets noise into equipment. In 1992 it introduced the Combo connector, which takes either an XLR plug or a quarter-inch jack in one socket.

The best-known name is speakON, the locking loudspeaker connector of 1987. German Wikipedia says it was developed from an invention and patent of Weingartner’s; the company says it met European low-voltage rules by protecting against accidental contact on both the socket and the plug. powerCON, a locking mains connector, followed in 1996; Neutrik calls it the standard for professional moving-head lights. etherCON, a ruggedised, locking version of the RJ45 network plug, came in 2001, and powerCON TRUE1, which can be connected and disconnected under load and is rated IP65, in 2012.

Later products moved beyond copper: opticalCON fibre-optic systems, including the 24-fibre MTP version of 2017 and DRAGONFLY of 2019; the XIRIUM wireless system of 2013; network audio devices for Dante and Milan; and, in 2018, a True Outdoor Protection range rated IP65 and protected against ultraviolet light. German Wikipedia records that the opticalCON powerMONITOR won an InAVation Award at Integrated Systems Europe in Amsterdam in 2011. Neutrik says it sold its first million connectors in 1983 and its billionth by 2015.

The name has become shorthand. German Wikipedia says that in broadcast and measurement work, “Neutrik” is used colloquially for multi-pin locking connectors in general.

Design and documentation.

Cables and connectors are the least visible part of a studio or stage rig, but engineers know the names on them. The seven makers in this guide come from six countries.

Two are Japanese. Mogami Wire & Cable, founded in 1957, is based in Shiojiri, Nagano, and has been a subsidiary of Oki Electric Cable since 2015, its website says. Canare was founded in Nagoya in 1970 by Kimio Kawamoto and now has its head office in Shin-Yokohama; its American arm says it listed on the Tokyo and Nagoya stock exchanges in 2006.

Switchcraft was established in Chicago in 1946 to make jacks, plugs and switches. Its own history says HEICO Corporation acquired it in 2011, and that its Chicago headquarters is the largest of its three manufacturing sites.

In Europe, Neutrik was founded in 1975 by Bernhard Weingartner with two investors and is based in Schaan, Liechtenstein, according to German Wikipedia. Sommer Cable, a private company, was founded in 1999 by Rainer Blanck and Friedhelm Sommer in Straubenhardt, at the edge of the Black Forest. Gotham AG, which says it has worked in professional audio since 1958, is based in Dietikon, near Zurich. Van Damme is the cable brand of VDC Trading of Tufnell Park, London, which says Niall Holden and Marcus DeFigueiredo started it in 1987 and that Holden has been its sole owner since 1994.

Their manufacturing claims differ in scope: Mogami’s American distributor says every foot of its cable is made in Nagano, while Sommer Cable claims “Made in Germany” for particular lines.

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 Schaan, the Isle of Wight and Ningbo.

Neutrik built its own factories abroad rather than relying on outside makers. The Lexikon records two additional production sites: the Isle of Wight, from 1986, and Ningbo in China, from 1994. The company says it entered Britain in 1986 by taking over a firm called Technical Projects on the island, which became Neutrik (UK) Ltd, and set up Ningbo Neutrik Electronic in 1994. It says manufacturing remains at its Schaan headquarters alongside management, research and development, logistics and finance, and that the group now has five production facilities and about 1,000 employees; the Lexikon counted around 750 staff in 2006, 250 of them in Liechtenstein.

Neutrik has stayed independent and private. The company is a Liechtenstein stock corporation, Neutrik AG, and German Wikipedia notes that its revenue is not published. The group’s current management lists Lukas von Arx as chief executive since July 2025 and a supervisory board chaired by Urs Sprenger. The group sells under three brands: NEUTRIK; REAN, a range of connectors relaunched worldwide in 2020; and CONTRIK, for power distribution, launched in 2021 after Neutrik bought the company Connex GmbH. Its expansion followed a steady pattern, according to its timeline: Neutrik Zurich in 1986, later renamed Contrik AG; Neutrik USA in 1988, its first subsidiary outside Europe; a German sales company in 2000; and in 2003 the takeover of its long-standing French distributor. In 2015 it opened a high-bay warehouse with around 15,000 storage spaces. It has sales companies in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China and Hong Kong, and distributors in more than 80 countries.

For a design guide, Neutrik shows how a component maker can become a household name in its trade through standards rather than consumer marketing. Compare Switchcraft, the American connector maker, and Shure, whose microphones rely on the same XLR plug. For this guide we use a navy and an alpine blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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