The Horgen firm Piega has one thing in common with Amazon, Google, Apple and HP: its story, too, began in a garage. In 1986, the two tinkerers Kurt Scheuch and Leo Greiner set out to realise their vision of loudspeakers that would sound superb while delighting the eye with the beauty of their form.
Back then, the individual parts were assembled into loudspeakers in Leo’s garage — and driven to the warehouse in Kurt’s estate car in the evening. Leo looked after the design of the speakers; Kurt developed the tweeters with their specially folded ribbons, which gave the company its name (piega is Italian for fold). They soon won over the specialist press, dealers and music lovers alike. The start of a success story.
The two founders, Leo Greiner and Kurt Scheuch, have since handed the running of the company to the second generation. At the beginning of 2018, Leo’s sons Alexander and Manuel Greiner took over the business, and they carry it on in the same spirit. Today Piega sells around 10,000 loudspeakers a year — accompanied by glowing reviews and numerous accolades from specialist media around the world. Customers occasionally travel from Dubai to Lake Zurich to experience perfect loudspeaker sound here.
The aluminium revolution
Another invention also contributed to the success and distinguishes the products to this day: in 1997, the Piega pioneers Leo and Kurt began making their loudspeaker cabinets from aluminium. Something the high-end fraternity initially scoffed at.
Within a short time, however — and above all with the sound of the new designs — they proved even the harshest critics wrong: the extruded aluminium provides the necessary stability and stiffness. Elaborate internal bracing and the use of special composite materials helped create an acoustically perfect cabinet.
“Our core aim is for our loudspeakers to reproduce music exactly as it was recorded in the studio — and as the artist intends,” says marketing director Roman Walser. But it doesn’t stop at good sound, as he goes on to explain: “For us, craftsmanship comes first, along with the high quality of the materials and the spirit of innovation. Our great challenge now is to keep refining a product that is already close to perfect.”
Timeless design
Piega also places an unmistakable emphasis on design. The timelessly elegant yet understated styling was created by the renowned, award-winning designers Hannes Wettstein and Stephan Hürlemann.
Utmost precision
Thanks to its precision in the details and its high efficiency, the ribbon comfortably outperforms a conventional dome tweeter. In the Premium series, for example, the sound is produced by a membrane measuring just 26 × 42 millimetres, made of a wafer-thin aluminium foil. Its moving mass weighs a mere seven milligrams — around 30 times less than the lightest dome tweeter available on the market. This membrane contains two flat coils, manufactured in an elaborate spray-mist etching process.
“This assembly step would be very difficult to automate; a human being does it far better,” says Mario Ballabio, who has been with Piega for 25 years. His father worked for the company before him — and recently his daughter has too.
Thirty-six years on, we visit Piega in a former tannery building, close to Horgen ZH railway station and right on the lakeshore. The company has been based here since 1991 — not far from the garage where it all began. Today a team of 25 employees works on the finest loudspeakers in the world. Over the years the product range has grown steadily — not least with active loudspeakers offering extensive streaming services — but the ribbon technology of the tweeter has remained.
Mechanic and ribbon specialist Mario Ballabio says: “The beauty of it is that everything here really works in concert: intuition as well as highly specialised measurement technology — we have physicists on the team too — and, ultimately, the craftsmanship. We develop, build and check everything ourselves. And in the end, it is all assembled with passion.”
Alongside the premium high-end products, priced at up to 70,000 francs, entry-level models are now available for around 1,100 francs a pair. Marketing director Walser names one of the goals the company has set itself for the future: “We want to make Piega known to those who haven’t always moved in the world of high fidelity — music lovers who may have a middling system at home and wish to hear music at a distinctly higher level of quality.”
This article appeared in MEN issue 2/22 (November 2022).
