Sidebar 1: The Benz Story, from the December 1990 issue (Vol.13 No.12)
In early April 1990 I made a journey to Switzerland to visit Ernst Benz, the manufacturer of the Benz-Micro MC-3 cartridge which so impressed Thomas J. Norton in the March 1990 issue, and to get a feel for the Swiss hi-fi and high-end market.
The Swiss market is a very active one, I soon learned. The timing of my visit coincided with High-End 90, the Swiss high-end show, held annually in the Mövenpick hotel in Egerkingen, located at about equal distance from the three major cities in the German-speaking part of Switzerland (footnote 1), Bern, Basel, and Zürich. The first such show was held in 1986, partly inspired by its German counterpart in Frankfurt. It was established to provide a forum for the national and international high-end community, which generally went unnoticed at the big electronics show, Fera, or just plain couldn't afford or justify a booth there. Initially observed with a mixture of caution and jealousy by the established mass-market forces—importers, manufacturers, press—it is now so well established that this year many of the Japanese electronics giants were represented. While this may undermine the original idea of the show (European shows are public, not trade shows like the CESes), it provides an opportunity for the manufacturer to get in direct contact with his customers, unfiltered by distributors and dealers who may have interests of their own when they relate buyers' reactions. But mass-market manufacturers attract mass-market customers, the dreaded "brochure collectors." These are people who are usually not interested in buying something right now, but take the opportunity to gather as much promo material as their plastic bags can hold, so that they can later sit down in the comfort of their own homes to establish which equipment sounds best (by counting the zeros after the decimal point in the distortion specs, of course) and then throw the whole lot away (footnote 2). The desire to get away from this type of customer was one of the original reasons for starting high-end–only shows. (Of course, even high-end customers like to listen to brochures.) But it may have lured in some people who otherwise would never have been exposed to real high-end equipment and sound.
Almost every brand that has any significance in the worldwide high-end arena is represented in Switzerland. I must admit I was a little baffled. Germany is a pretty good country for American high-end wares, yet a German importer will sell probably about the same number of, say, an expensive amplifier as a large dealer in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York area. How can importing into such a relatively small country as Switzerland, even if the Swiss earn good money and appreciate well-reproduced music, be economically viable, given the need for a service department and relatively high costs of advertising per customer? Well, for one thing, importers from the neighbor countries—Italy, France, and Germany—are quite willing to supply a Swiss dealer, even if there is an officially appointed importer in Switzerland. Plus, prices in Switzerland are very high, about on a level with France (where the high end suffers from a 28% sales tax).
The Swiss consumer is said to be well-informed and quite sure of his own judgment. Where in Germany a good test in one of the glossies almost guarantees sales, the Swiss are less likely to be influenced by magazines. They are very design-conscious; ugly loudspeakers don't stand a chance, the Swiss sharing the current Continental predilection for tall, slim columns (footnote 3).
Ernst Benz's premises are situated in Nehausen, close to the German border and the site of Europe's largest waterfall. The Rhine river drops about 14 meters here; if you've seen Niagara or Iguaca, you wouldn't be impressed, but I myself was a little awed. Seeing this waterfall alone would have made my trip worthwhile, even had I not also had the pleasure of meeting Benz.
Ernst Benz is an engineer. In the mid-'60s, he was working for a large Swiss manufacturing and engineering concern. In his free time, he tinkered with things hi-fi, mostly cartridges. Having made the pilgrimage to Idar-Oberstein, in Germany, where Europe's leading diamond maker, Dr. Ernst Weinz, was located, like so many others before and after him he left convinced that the Weinz setup was good but could be improved upon. In 1965, Benz set up shop for himself. He developed two basic patents: a way to give a better polish to diamond tips, and a better way to bond diamond tips to cantilevers. The latter invention proved crucial. Benz had the idea of performing the soldering process in a vacuum. It was quicker and far more reliable than the usual free-air process used by every other maker at the time.
The company has had its ups and downs. Benz expanded very quickly and soon supplied practically everybody who made cartridges in significant volume: Shure, Pickering, Empire, Ortofon, Audio-Technica, ADC, and others. Peak volume was about 9 million needles a year, an awesome number. The workforce was at around the 150 mark.
Benz catered mainly to the inexpensive volume end of the market. In 1981–82, he was approached by the owners of Empire, then an American company based in New York. The owners, reaching retirement age, asked Benz, a major supplier, if he wanted to buy the company. Benz did. This, he says, was the worst mistake of his life. The factory he took over was old and not particularly efficient. Quality was mediocre because the worn-out machines could not be coaxed to work to close tolerances. The workforce, too, was not very dynamic, so introducing new processes and products proved very difficult. Benz had to divide his time equally between New York and Switzerland, spending four weeks at a time in each of his factories. Needless to say, this led to severe morale problems in both places.
In the early '80s, consumer interest in hi-fi fell off and the business volume shrank (in '84, CD saved the industry), computer games being the thing customers spent their money on. Finally, Benz's other OEM customers, principally Ortofon and Audio-Technica, were none too pleased that their supplier now wanted to compete with them in the finished-product market, and let their contracts run out without renewal. In the end, Benz had no choice but to close down Empire in the US and trim back his operations in Switzerland. His American adventure turned out to have cost him an awful lot of money. About the only thing that remains is the name, which Benz has kept for his Swiss company: Empire Scientific.
Benz sold his needle production to Ortofon and these days only manufactures MC cartridges. In 1984, he teamed up with Aalt Jouk van den Hul from the Netherlands, whom he supplies OEM with his own designs, for the basic design of a new range of cartridges marketed in the US under the BMS (Benz Micro of Switzerland$s1$s0) brand. He also supplied Madrigal with the Carnegie cartridges.
To make about 5000 cartridges a year, you don't need a large workforce. It takes practice, dedication, and a light but secure touch to perform these operations; all of the employees concerned with the delicate manufacturing process are female. Everything is done by hand; the coil wire, for example, is so thin that it will snap at a mere 5-Newton tension (less than you are exerting to hold this page); when I held the wire between thumb and index finger, I couldn't even feel it. It must be extremely difficult to glue the needle to the cantilever, then mount the cantilever on the coil armature, and keep them at an exact angle of 90°.
All manufacturing operations are performed under microscopes. The breaks are a little longer than in normal factories, but I'm sure they are very well earned. The smallest details make very audible differences with cartridges: the needle, the thickness of the coil wire, whether you take a square plate or a little cross to wind the coils on...Some of the reasons why the MC-3 is something special are, for example, that there is a very thin layer of lacquer sprayed on the coils so that they cannot tarnish or vibrate, even microscopically, and that the leadout wires from coils to connecting pins are glued down so that they, too, cannot resonate. I got nervous just watching all this. The thought of ruining an expensive cartridge with one false movement, however small, was a strong disincentive from trying my own hand at MC manufacture.
While he certainly does not have a tin ear, I think Ernst Benz is too down-to-earth to exert himself in the religious intricacies of the confirmed high-end fanatic. As I said, he's an engineer; I guess he gets more satisfaction from doing an excellent production job on his cartridges (every cartridge is individually measured and checked before it is allowed to leave the factory) than from listening to tiny nuances. He's a craftsman in the best possible sense of the word; if he hadn't turned to things hi-fi, I'm sure his skills would have made him just as successful in other areas where precise manufacture is important.
Carlos Lies is the man responsible for the continued sonic development of the Benz range. Recent experiments include a different damper material; while it let the midrange breathe more freely, it also lent a screechy quality to the highs. As always, the secret lies in finding the best compromise. One astonishing demonstration was to hear an MC-3 (in an SME V, with Swiss Physics electronics and several pairs of loudspeakers) with and without outer body. The "naked" cartridge sounded more alive, by a considerable margin, but in a world infested with small children, cats, dust, and cleaning women—speaking for the moment from a purely audiophile point of view!—this is probably not a very practical proposition.
Ernst Benz had a severe traffic accident in 1988 when a negligent driver almost killed him. He took a long time to recover, which is why the company has not been in the limelight for a while. (Not that this experience slowed him down all that much; he had another near-brush with death recently while enjoying his hobby, flying his sailplane.) He came back to work on a Revox turntable, a design which offers CD-like convenience, but suffers from terminal structural instability in several key parts, notably the tonearm. Benz builds in several redesigned parts, literally transforming the original design, then installs one of his MCs. The resultant player is called the Empire MC-Reference and apparently sells quite well to audiophiles who either don't want the hassle of the usual audiophile turntables, or whose families want to play music on the big system but can't be trusted with expensive MCs in normal 'tables: the Reference features wholly automatic operation. The sound quality is broadly comparable with a good CD player, so if you have a large collection of analog LPs, yet have grown used to the creature comforts a CD player routinely offers, this might be the answer.
There is a finished design for a preamplifier, but Benz is as yet undecided on whether to put it into production. He may team up with Swiss Physics' Mauro del Nobile for a power amp and then offer a complete range of electronics. (Benz tried to distribute Spectral, which he rates very highly sonically, in Switzerland, but pulled out when Spectral, anxious to protect its technology, refused to supply circuit schematics for service purposes.) Apart from these hi-fi–related activities, Benz builds vacuum ovens, an area where he has some considerable expertise going back to his early patents for diamond tippings.—Markus Sauer
Footnote 1: Switzerland must be the only country in the world with four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Retoroman; a luxury probably only this small a country can afford! Footnote 2: At German shows it has become an increasingly common practice to charge a nominal amount for every brochure, proceeds going to charity, to ensure that only the genuinely interested take a brochure.
Footnote 3: Which means that, for once, a pan-European audio trend started in Germany. Will wonders never cease?
Footnote 1: Switzerland must be the only country in the world with four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Retoroman; a luxury probably only this small a country can afford! Footnote 2: At German shows it has become an increasingly common practice to charge a nominal amount for every brochure, proceeds going to charity, to ensure that only the genuinely interested take a brochure.
