April 2025
When I attended the Capital Audio Fest in November, I experienced many demo rooms full of impressive gear. I found myself being pulled into a few of them because, even as I was passing by in the hallway, I could hear music that sounded not just good, but lifelike. As I wandered into one such room in particular, I was immediately impressed by the appearance of the turntables, integrated amplifier, and speakers on display. They looked natural, organic, and inviting.
More important, the music I was hearing sounded effortless. The understated elegance of the speakers was matched by their presentation of the music. It was detailed and rich, with a deep, wide soundstage. The timbre of the instruments and the subtleties of the singers’ vocal shadings came through with startling clarity, without straining or overemphasizing any aspect of the recording.
The company responsible for what I saw and heard was Fern & Roby, based in Richmond, VA. Christopher Hildebrand started Fern & Roby with his wife and named the company after his grandmothers. According to its website, Fern & Roby has been “designing and creating high-fidelity audio equipment since 2010.” I spoke to Hildebrand while I was at Capfest and asked if I could send him some questions about his experiences with the show. Later, it occurred to me that I should get in touch with him to do an article about his company.
The Fern & Roby site notes that the company “is the in-house brand and product line of Tektonics Design Group, our 20+ year-old contract design and manufacturing business.” Tektonics is a multifaceted company, offering design, prototyping, and manufacturing that can “take your project from concept to production.” The company occupies a 20,000-square-foot facility in the Manchester section of Richmond. To focus just on one aspect of its business, it offers the following manufacturing processes:
- CNC machining and routing
- CNC turning
- Foundry and casting tooling
- 3D scanning
- Fabrication
- Laser engraving
Tektonics’ work extends well beyond audio, but it has designed and manufactured driver baskets for Devore Fidelity, and it was instrumental in helping Linear Tube Audio (LTA) develop and bring a number of its products from past years into production. For that collaboration, Tektonics consulted on user interface and chassis design, ensuring that parts on LTA’s products were easy to assemble but secure, and designing and creating a finish for the products that was attractive and practical. In addition, Tektonics worked with LTA to ensure that there were good electronic contact surfaces linked to the chassis.
I visited Fern & Roby / Tektonics in mid-February with my friend Mike, a fellow audio enthusiast, and spoke with Christopher Hildebrand (in photo below) and two members of his staff, Kate Murray and Sarah Kemp. I asked Hildebrand about his education and background.
Hildebrand explained:
I studied fine art with this real specialization in traditional craft—so blacksmithing, other kinds of crafts like ceramics. I studied at Earlham College, a small Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana. I love collaborating and I love sculpture. I ran a bronze foundry for a while and then I started working with architects and interior designers.
I started the company [Tektonics] with a friend 21 years ago, and we started designing and building things for the construction industry, interior designers, architects, and engineers, and expanding upon that. And then I got to a point where I was making everybody’s ideas happen and I had stopped designing and creating for myself.
Fern & Roby really started at first centered around furniture. Then a friend asked me to make a pair of speakers. I realized in doing that that I didn’t even have a stereo anymore. I had sacrificed it to the convenience of MP3s and my computer. I also realized that I actually stopped listening to music at that point.
My parents always had music on, so it was just a big part of my existence. Then I have this experience where a friend asked me to do speakers and then I was like, “It’d be really cool to have my own speaker.” And then I was like, “Why? You don’t have anything to play it with.” I realized what I was missing and that was the moment where I thought I might be more passionate about shifting my focus to audio rather than furniture. The furniture became a distraction, so I took it off the site and we’re focused on audio now.
Fern & Roby currently makes two speakers, the bookshelf Raven II and the floorstanding Raven III. It makes a stand for the Raven II, but the speaker is designed for flexibility in placement, and you can use the stands for any bookshelf speaker. The Raven II is a sealed box, while the Raven III is ported. Both speakers are available in walnut or natural ash and use a SEAS full-range driver. They are rated at 94db sensitivity, so they’re a great match with low-powered amps, although they can also handle more robust power.
Fern & Roby’s website notes that they “worked with SEAS to develop our own Full-Range single driver solution, tailored to deliver the seamless beauty of a single driver with no crossover and satisfying, coherent bass down below 40Hz.”
I saw the Raven speakers in action at Capital Audio Fest and in the demo room at Fern & Roby. In both cases they were powered by a Fern & Roby Amp No. 2, Hildebrand’s second collaboration with amp designer Michael Bettinger, a 45-year veteran in audio. The Amp No. 2 is a solid-state, class-AB design rated at 25Wpc, and includes a phono stage. The walnut faceplate and brass selector buttons and volume control make for a very attractive piece of audio gear, and it includes a beautiful and substantial brass remote control.
“Nobody can be an expert on everything,” Hildebrand responded when I asked about collaborating with Bettinger.
Our business has always been about specialized contracting. We were often asked to do things by our clientele that involved intersectional integration of wood, metal, and plastics in things like a reception desk or sculpture. That requires a lot of management and contracting expertise. That’s what Tektonics has been doing for 21 years.
So with Fern & Roby, me not knowing how to be an electronic engineer but being in mechanical design, that was a place where I felt I could design the user experience. I get to think about the input and output.
In doing mechanical design for Linear Tube Audio and John Devore and for our own things, I’ve learned a lot about electronics. What I’ve discovered is that the various camps—analog versus digital, solid state versus tube—are missing the point. Really careful, thoughtful circuit design, grounding, and power supply is often more important than whether it’s “accurate.”
If you have noise in the system, you’re listening to that at the same time you’re listening to the music. Making something really good is about getting all the noise out of the system. You don’t want any RF, no ground loops. Mike [Bettinger] likes a direct-coupled power supply to the stages, and he wants to control how each stage interacts with the next. Because if you end up with sloshing back and forth power requirements, you end up with noise.
Hildebrand is attentive to “good material selection: choosing manufacturers of resistors, for instance, that care about matching so you don’t have to put as much effort into auditioning every piece. We had our own RCA connectors and speaker connectors made for us. That was really important to me because brass has about 20 to 30 percent copper and is a poor conductor. Am I going to argue that my amps sound better because of my copper connectors? No, but it’s not going to be a failure point.
“We approach every single decision we made with that principle in mind,” he told me. “The more things you kick out of the problem set, the better chance you have of making it sound really great.”
The Amp No. 2 has been well reviewed, and when I heard it, I was impressed by its relaxed musicality. It has one balanced (XLR) and two single-ended (RCA) line-level inputs, as well as a phono input. You can set the phono input inside the chassis so it can be used with a moving-magnet or moving-coil cartridge.
The turntables Fern & Roby makes show the same combination of artful design and audiophile performance. The company’s Tredegar turntable first caught the attention of audio reviewers. Its cast-iron base and brass platter were eye-catching, but they also provided sonic benefits. Fern & Roby now offers two turntables, the Montrose and the Montrose Heirloom.
The Montrose uses Richlite for the plinth and Richlite and brass inserts for the platter. Richlite is made from resin-infused recycled paper and is dense enough to help minimize vibration. It also looks good and, in keeping with one of Fern & Roby’s and Tektonics’ values, is environmentally friendly. The front baffles on Fern & Roby’s speakers are also made of Richlite.
“I’ve been working with Richlite as an architectural material for a long time,” Hildebrand told me. “When I started making audio products, I was like ‘Oh, I really like this.’ Like hardwood, it has a beautiful nature through it so when you cut it, the side of it is attractive. It’s not like a veneer or flake board. It’s constant. It’s very rugged and durable and as a composite material it breaks up resonance.”
The Montrose Heirloom turntable uses a 28-pound brass platter in place of the Richlite/brass one used on the Montrose, and adds a brass LP weight, which Fern & Roby also sells separately. Both ’tables use a Schröder CB tonearm by Thrax, which has a carbon-fiber wand. The unipivot arm is notable for its high-quality, low-friction ceramic bearings and ease of adjustment.
“Turntables are complex,” Hildebrand explained. “They’re the hardest thing we make in a lot of ways, because it’s a kinetic machine. I have a good friend [Luke Smith] who is an electrical engineer, and his specialty is controls: motor controllers and things like that. Luke and I have been working on this project for Fern & Roby from the very start. He designed the motor controller for the turntable, which is like a cruise control for a car.
“It’s called a PID controller [more information about the concept here]. It’s a high-frequency drive that uses pulse-width modulation to control the speed of the motor, and it has an optical sensor that reads the platter speed and makes course corrections once per revolution.” Fern & Roby describes the result as a Modular Active PID Drive Unit, or MAP Drive.
For its turntables, Fern & Roby features cartridge options by Sculpture A and Soundsmith, but offers other brands and will advise buyers on the compatibility of various cartridges.
The Fern & Roby website notes that “[we] make our products in our 20,000 square foot shop in Richmond, Virginia. We don’t do everything, but we do the majority of it. We aren’t a company that just bolts together things made by other people. We design & manufacture goods from raw materials.” Fern & Roby and Tektonics occupy the same manufacturing space, but the Amp No. 2 and turntables are assembled in a separate room on the factory floor.
Given that Fern & Roby’s products are labor-intensive and made in limited numbers, their costs are surprisingly reasonable. The Amp No. 2 costs $8500 (all prices in USD), the Raven II speaker is $5950 per pair, and the Raven III comes in at $7650 per pair. The Montrose Heirloom ’table is around $14,500, depending on options, and the Montrose is $8500. It’s easy to find far more expensive audio gear that doesn’t have the craftsmanship, build quality, or sonic excellence of Fern & Roby’s products.
I already noted that Fern & Roby makes speaker stands, but it also offers two equipment racks, an amp stand, and wood LP-display stands. It also makes three LP weights, 2″ and 3″ isolation feet, and lifestyle items that include T-shirts, a salt well, and wooden coasters.
When I was on Fern & Roby’s website, I noticed that in addition to its own audio gear, it sells products by Linear Tube Audio, Weiss, and Technics, among others. It also offers a wide selection of audiophile cables. I was surprised to see some affordable Technics turntables on the site.
“I grew up listening to a Technics system,” Hildebrand said. “You get into something because you love making things, but a big part of your business is supporting people who love music and helping them get into hi-fi. We needed a product that would help us support younger people with more rational budgets. It doesn’t have to be about me and my design. It can be about me helping somebody enjoy their music.”
A glance at the Tektonics website provides a glimpse of how far-reaching and extensive its work is, but when I spoke to Hildebrand about Fern & Roby, it was clear to me that audio was a passion, not a sideline. It allows him to fulfill his creative urges in design while also giving people a way to hear beautifully and accurately reproduced music. I look forward to wandering into the Fern & Roby demo room again at Capital Audio Fest later this year to see what new things the company has in store.
. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com
