Full Interview
Tevis Laukat and his wife Sheryl formed Cannonball Musical Instruments in 1996 in Sandy, Utah, located just south of Salt Lake City. The couple set out to address some of the issues they and their musician friends were having with their instruments. As a touring performer with a host of jazz and...
Michael Cooney taught music in the public schools in Massachusetts for over 25 years. During the time of his teaching he also established a high-end flute company in the early 1970s called Northeast Winds. Over the years the company built a worldwide reputation for quality of product with a special...
Jol Dantzig met Paul Hamer in college and played together in various bands before the two formed their own retail and teaching studio. They soon found themselves designing and building their own style of electric guitars and basses. With the help of two other friends, the Hamer Guitar Company was...
Frank Untermyer studied woodworking and instrument building in Germany before returning to the United States to help form Hamer Guitars with college friends, Paul Hamer and Jol Dantzig. The company produced a series of innovative products and when it was sold to Kaman, both Frank and Jol moved to...
Alfredo Flores was born in Mexico in 1908 and moved to San Antonio, Texas with his mother and grandmother when he was a small boy. He took several jobs as a young man including a position with the Thomas Goggan piano company. His experience with the piano company provided Mr. Flores with the idea...
Sammy Ash was named after his grandfather, the founder of the Sam Ash Music Company in New York City. Like his grandfather, Sammy has a deep passion and understanding of the music business and although both men faced different challenges in different eras, they both felt customer service was the...
Rudy Schlacher has become of the great businessmen of the music products industry, which is incredible considering his humble beginnings. With an idea of detail, customer service and the budget, Rudy took his small music retail store called the Sound Post in Chicago and expanded the business. He...
Robert Bromberg has had a long career in the music products industry, as did his father. In fact, his father designed the mirror piano, which helped keep the industry alive during World War II. Adding mirrors to used pianos helped to make them more sellable, as all-new pianos were not being made...
George Massenburg has been the recording engineer on countless successful albums during his long and varied career, but may be best known for changing the way the music products industry looked at pro-audio gear with his 1972 paper on the parametric equalizer. Parametric equalizer, also known as EQ...
Elianne Schiedmayer proudly serves as the CEO of the Schiedmayer company. Since 1735 Schiedmayer has been at the service of music, building keyboard instruments of the highest craft. In 1809 the company settled in Stuttgart, Germany, and quickly gained worldwide reputation for its pianos and...