Music Manufacturing
Theo Dollmann was the sales representative for Schott Music, the famed music publisher located in Mainz Germany. He joined the company in 1939 and continued to work for the company past his retirement. During his NAMM Oral History interview, Mr. Dollmann recounted how the manuscripts and important...
Michael Compernass is the president of the Hoyer Guitar Company in Germany. Michael focuses on the history of the company’s innovative products, particularly those created by Arthur Hoyer in the late 1940s until his passing in 1967 and Arnold’s son, Walter, who ran the company for a decade. Michael...
Ulrich Sauter grew up in the middle of the Sauter Piano Company, as his great grandfather formed the factory in Spaichingen, Germany. In fact his family lived in a small house surrounded by piano factory buildings on all four sides. As he puts it, there was no other job he ever thought about doing...
Christoph Kemper blended his love of music with his love of computer programming as early as 1986 when he put his Commodore 64 to use coding for musical sounds. Kemper formed Access Music Electronics in the late 1990s just after rolling out its first product, the Access Virus series A. The Virus...
Burkhard Stein grew up in a music retail family, which focused on selling pianos in Marburg, Germany. After school he wanted to learn about the manufacturing of pianos and began working for the Grotrian Piano Company. The company began in 1835 when Friedrich Grotrian opened his own factory after...
Reiner Hammerl is the son of Josef Hammerl, who in 1938 opened a drugstore in Germany. Among the products he created himself were natural wood varnishes and stains that soon became well used by violin makers. When Reiner joined the company in 1954, the product line was well established as a leading...
Kurt Lutz was a well-regarded German luthier who, along with many other instrument makers, settled in Bubenreuth, Germany following World War II. Mr. Lutz provided a first-hand account of the era by explaining that the city council created a poster seeking to find instrument makers displaced by the...
Gerold Hannabach was born in Schönbach, Czechoslovakia into a family with a long tradition in the building of music instruments. In 1948 he did his apprenticeship at the guitar manufacturer, Arnold Hoyer in Bubenreuth near Nürnberg and opened a workshop for fine classical guitars for resale in 1953...
Walter Hoyer took over the guitar production shop that his great grandfather had started and for which his father, Arnold Hoyer, made famous during the late 1940s and 50s. Arnold passed away in 1967 leaving Walter to take over the business. He focused on building his father’s designs as well as...
Artur Teller created a successful career by producing highly regarded violin bridges and supplying them to luthiers in and around his hometown of Bubenreuth, Germany. Like many of the instrument builders he sold to, Artur and his family moved to Bubenreuth after World War II as the small town...