Fine turntables have been produced in Bergisch Gladbach for five decades – those from the Transrotor brand. They are created by hand.
The place that everything revolves around for many vinyl fans is located on a hill on the edge of Bergisch Gladbach. A gravel path winds from the garden gate past a semi-detached house. The ground floor was built directly into a slope; the building has a solid stone wall at the bottom and a wooden roof at the top. The idyll is surrounded by trees that shield it from the rest of the world: from share prices that decide the future of a company in a moment, from the hectic business world in which a smartphone is always vibrating somewhere or an urgent ping in an email in the inbox generated.
This is the realm of Jochen and Dirk Räke. The two are father and son as well as founders and managing directors of the company Räke Hifi/Vertrieb, which the scene only knows under the brand name Transrotor. Since the beginning of the 1970s, turntables that are among the most exclusive the industry has to offer have been produced here, just outside Cologne. Prices start at 3,000 euros and do not end at 200,000 euros. The Räkes assemble a few hundred devices a year with a good dozen employees by hand – made of bare metal, transparent acrylic, and deep black add-on parts.
The cheapest transrotor turntable costs 3000 euros
Some enthusiasts buy the devices primarily as a design object. An early model was featured in Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction film A Clockwork Orange. For most people, however, the outstanding sound quality is more important than the appearance: “Incomparable,” say record fanatics in online forums or: “A pleasure every time.” The sound of a transrotor record player in Bellevue Palace enchanted the then Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker. Räke gets a lot of fan mail. “You made me happy,” a customer recently wrote. A buyer wished him in writing: “May fate treat you as well as you treat your customers.”
The quality of the products may be beyond any doubt. The fact that the company still exists is nothing short of a miracle.
Transrotor sources most of its components from suppliers in the region
© Jan Ladwig