Product Engineers
Manfred Hibbing is known around the world as one of only a few top experts on RF Studio condenser microphones. He has designed and developed many award-winning innovations in microphone technology and he did it all at Sennheiser in Germany. Proud of his role in the company, he retired in 2005 from...
Byron Autrey loved to tell you everything you needed to know about how a trumpet works, and I mean everything! Byron studied the craft of trumpet design for decades, having been a player all of his life. The mathematical approach he took in understanding the flow of air and the vibration of the...
Wilbur Fuller took to woodwork at a young age. When he was 16, from the instructions in a magazine, he made a desk which still stands in the corner of his small farmhouse in western Michigan. In 1954, his cousin Walter, who engineered the Gibson amplifier in nearby Kalamazoo, told Wilbur of an...
Morton Subotnick composed one of the earliest and most important works of electronic music. When his album “Silver Apples of the Moon” was released in the late 1960s, it represented an entirely new era of composition. Years before the recording, he hired inventor and engineer Don Buchla to create a...
Marvin Jones is the founding editor of Polyphony, an early and important magazine covering the growth and development of the synthesizer industry and its many innovators and leaders. Marvin talked of his wonderful background in music, going back to his father who was a designer and creator of...
Ziggy Kanstul knew more about brass instruments than most people. As an important part of the manufacturing end of the FE Olds Company, Ziggy became an expert on model designs, the specifications for each and every product, and the measurements of the horns made by their competitors. He later...
Flip Oakes is the designer of the Wild Thing series of trumpets and cornets. Although Flip is a master of many musical instruments including the clarinet and saxophone (for which he was widely known during most of the 1960s and 70s), the trumpet later became his main instrument. He established the...
Charles Walter was a pillar in the piano business for nearly 60 years. He was hired by the C.G. Conn Company to work in the piano design department back in 1964. While there he worked under the legendary Dr. Earle Kent, the Director of Research and Engineering. When the company decided to...
Tom Oberheim is the inventor of the first polyphonic music synthesizer, who played a vital role in the establishment of MIDI standards back in the early 1980s. The Oberheim Company created a long list of innovative products, which remain sought-after as vintage instruments including the Oberheim 4...
Ned Steinberger is known around the world for his innovative instrument designs. His guitars and basses created without the traditional headstock gained wide popularity in the 1980s rock era and have come to be known simply as Steinbergers. When he formed NS Designs in 1990, Ned focused on electric...