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It's simply a sequence of two consonants.
There's a syllable break between the k and n in 'ackney, but not in Knipex. If you come to juddering halt at the k in Knipex in the way you do in 'ackney, it sounds weird (at least to those of us who don't speak Xhosa 🙂), the epenthetic schwa allows it to trip off the tongue.
gbj_tester-
Ah, sorry, I didn't realise that that was what you stumbled over. There is no epenthic schwa in the German name. It's exactly the same sequence of consonants as in 'Cockney' and 'Hackney'. The only difference is in stress ('cock' and 'hack' being the stressed syllables). I can well imagine that the lack of a difference in stress within the initial kn- may make it more difficult for certain speakers to produce the initial kn- as opposed to -kn-, e.g. native English speakers, but German speakers are used to this.
Oliver Schick
Well, you said:
There's none in 'Hackney' or 'Cockney', my earlier examples, either, unless a speaker deliberately lengthens it (which is obviously perfectly permissible if someone so wishes). It's simply a sequence of two consonants.
Yes, that's wrong.