Company Profile / Hardware · Public Safety
The Guy From "Cops" Who Now Fixes The One Thing Every Officer's Radio Gets Wrong
For 25 years, a small California shop has quietly rebuilt the earpiece the police radio industry treated as an afterthought - starting with a man who spent years filming officers before he ever sold them anything.
Before Ruben Scheimberg sold a single earpiece, he spent years pointing a camera at the people who would become his customers. As a cameraman on the ride-along television shows "Cops" and "LAPD: Life on the Beat," he watched officers work in real time - the traffic stops, the foot chases, the quiet stretches - and he kept noticing the same small failure. The radio gear in their ears was uncomfortable, conspicuous, and unreliable. In 1997 he stopped filming the problem and started fixing it.
The company he founded, The Earphone Connection - known in the trade as EPC - is now a roughly 14-person operation headquartered at 25139 Avenue Stanford in Santa Clarita, California. It designs and manufactures two-way radio accessories: earpieces, lapel microphones, covert surveillance kits, wireless push-to-talk rigs, and the small replacement parts that keep all of it working. Its customers are police officers, security teams, and government users - plus a growing set of hotels, retailers, and industrial crews who live on their radios.
It is not a household name. That is rather the point. EPC works in a category most people never think about, serving customers whose gear has to disappear into a uniform. And in that overlooked corner, a small California shop has racked up a surprising number of industry firsts.
01 / The OriginA camera crew's accidental market research
Most hardware companies start with a spec sheet. EPC started with a vantage point. Riding along for a living meant Scheimberg saw the job the way officers experienced it, not the way a catalog described it. His first product reflected that: an earpiece with a hook that sat comfortably on the ear and let an officer hear the radio without broadcasting every transmission to whoever was standing nearby.
The name carries the whole strategy in two words. "Earphone" is the discreet audio - the ability to listen without being overheard. "Connection" is compatibility - gear that works across the tangle of radio makes and models an agency actually owns, from Motorola to Kenwood to Icom. In a market where a manufacturer could easily bet on one platform, EPC bet on working with all of them.
"An earpiece should be a staple of every uniform - right next to the weapon and the body armor."
Ruben Scheimberg, Founder & President02 / The ProductThe Hawk, and the gunk nobody talks about
The signature product is the Hawk EC Lapel Microphone: a compact, whisper-sensitive, uni-directional mic that clips to a shirt lapel, paired with a clear acoustic tube earpiece and a comfortable ear tip. It is the company's best seller and, in many ways, its thesis in physical form - built to be heard clearly and worn all day.
Then there is EPC's favorite piece of marketing, which doubles as product strategy: showing people what builds up inside a traditional earpiece tube. It is not pleasant. That small disgust is exactly what drove the company's tubeless line - the Micro Sound series drops the acoustic tube entirely and puts a tiny speaker driver directly into the ear tip, so there is nothing to trap moisture and grime over a long shift.
The comfort obsession produced another first. The Fin Ultra Ambi ear tip is billed as the first ambidextrous ear tip on the market - one soft-silicone piece that fits either the left or right ear, with an open shape that lets ambient sound in so an officer keeps situational awareness. It sounds like a minor detail. Ask anyone who has fumbled with a left-versus-right accessory in the dark whether it is minor.
03 / The RangeFrom covert wires to your own AirPods
The catalog fans out from there. For covert work, EPC builds surveillance kits - 1-, 2-, and 3-wire configurations like the Cougar and the Black Diamond Tactical line, with quick-release "Easy-Connect" cables so a cord can be swapped without rebuilding the whole rig. For listen-only needs there are the Fox earpiece and the Whisper covert earpiece; for custom fit, the Ghost soft-rubber earmold; for noisy environments, an Audio Armor hearing-protection headset with Bluetooth that lets a user hear the radio while blocking damaging noise.
The most telling product is the Air Pro Wireless Kit. Rather than force officers onto proprietary earbuds, EPC built a kit that pairs with the true-wireless earbuds people already own - Apple AirPods, Beats, AfterShokz - and connects them to a two-way radio. It is a small act of meeting customers where they are, and it hints at where the company keeps pushing: the Phoenix Drone Kit, added in late 2025, extends the same communication accessories toward drone and UAS operators.
04 / The ModelSell the kit, then keep selling the parts
EPC is both manufacturer and distributor. It sells direct through its own e-commerce store - the site runs on WordPress and WooCommerce, with Mailchimp handling the email side - and it moves volume through a dealer network that includes specialty public-safety retailers like LA Police Gear, alongside government and agency sales.
The quiet engine underneath is replacement parts. Ear tips wear out, tubes get swapped, cables fray, microphones get replaced. A single hardware sale turns into a recurring relationship - the kind of steady, unglamorous revenue that lets a 14-person company survive for a quarter century without chasing venture funding.
05 / The EdgeHow a small shop out-lists the giants
EPC competes with far larger accessory makers - Klein Electronics, Impact Radio Accessories, Waveband Communications, Otto Engineering, and the OEM accessories bundled by the radio manufacturers themselves. It does not try to out-spend them. Its stated approach is simpler: listen closely to officers in the field, then design and build for what they describe, and back it with a hassle-free warranty.
That listening habit is the through-line from the "Cops" ride-alongs to the drone kit. It is also how a small team ends up with the first wireless push-to-talk microphone, the first quick-release cables, and the first ambidextrous ear tip on its résumé - along with an industry award in wireless communications. When your research method is standing next to the customer, you notice things a spec sheet never surfaces.
"In 20 years, our business has grown exponentially, and we feel so fortunate to have been a part of the Santa Clarita Valley since our humble beginnings."
The Earphone Connection06 / The TimelineTwenty-five years of firsts
Scheimberg leaves TV camerawork and launches EPC with a hook-style ear-mounted earpiece.
The first wireless push-to-talk microphone and the first quick-release cables reach the market.
After two decades of agency sales, EPC opens its Valencia showroom and introduces the Fin Ultra Ambi ear tip.
Mainstream earbuds - AirPods, Beats, AfterShokz - get paired to two-way radios.
A discreet listen-only earpiece joins the lineup.
The company extends its accessories toward drone and UAS operators.
07 / The MarketWhere EPC fits
In the broader consumer-electronics world, EPC is a specialist - a manufacturer classified under communications equipment (SIC 3663) that stays deliberately narrow. It does not chase the mass earbud market. It owns a niche where reliability, comfort, and discretion outrank brand recognition, and where the buyer is often an agency, not an individual. That focus is the whole business: pick a corner everyone else treats as an afterthought, serve it for 25 years, and quietly collect the firsts.
What can anyone building a company take from it? Three things. Get close enough to your customer that you feel their problems, not just hear about them. Compete on the boring, physical details rivals ignore - comfort, hygiene, compatibility. And build a product that keeps selling parts long after the first sale. None of it requires a war chest. It requires paying attention.