To stay on course for a simple introductory factory tour, we'll now look at more photos. Here we see one cable assembly station…
… and here another. This was not your usual chop shop of terminating off-the-spool Neotec cables from China and adding branded heat shrink.
In the amplifier area, I witnessed …
… samples of the Aavik U-150 integrated with its Pascal-based switching output stage. The standalone amplifiers meanwhile were based on Michael's unique class A output stage which approaches the efficiency of traditional class A/B circuits yet is no sliding-bias design. His driver stage delivers 200mA and his bias is set not by a resistor as is common but with the diode between base and emitter of the output transistors of which there are 16 pairs.
In the speaker assembly area, I could observe a crossover board being wired up.
The raw cabinets are sourced from the same Sino plant which produces enclosures for Sonus faber and Dynaudio. The final dress baffle which simply plugs into retainers isn't aluminum but high-density fiber board which takes an immaculate black paint finish.
Here's a closeup of Børresen's proprietary iron-less motor.
Here we see a ribbon tweeter and its rear-plate perforations to vent as a dipole.
Custom parts abounded, be it fittings for enormous volume knobs or proprietary banana plugs.
Darkz Vader's bones lived meticulously sorted in a smaller Viking cemetary.
In the next photo, Tesla coils wound by hand by Michael's father join custom plug extrusions and a laser printer that etches the plugs with the respective model names.
Here are the guts of a preamplifier.
Next Lars held up one channel's output stage for the big Aavik amplifier. Note how the transistor in the gap between the capacitors is sleeved in copper.
With this final look at drivers, driver baskets and a small Tesla-coil PCB…
… it was off to the Aalborg airport for me where I spotted this sign. These Danes sure have proper stamina when it comes to the better things in life.
On the way onto my plane, I overheard a mom say happily to her youngster, "that's not a bad idea". To which the son replied even more cheerily, "that means it's a good idea then". Visiting Aalborg to learn more about Ansuz, Aavik and Børresen was a very good idea indeed. I had a great time and my hosts were most hospitable. Stay tuned for a future series of reviews to learn more about their three exciting brands. The first review planned is on the Model 02 loudspeaker.
Aalborg's water front.
