OH Taxonomy
Wally Evans grew up in Wales with music all around him. He played piano and sang in church. He later learned to play the guitar and worked in several bands at night and worked in a power plant by day. For two years he studied electronic musical instrument technology in London before being hired by...
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...
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...
Gary Stewart Hurst is known around the industry as “Gary the Fuzzman” for being the inventor of the Tone Bender fuzz pedal, which he began producing in the 1960s. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page started using Gary’s Tone Benders in 1965 and soon demand for his fuzz pedals came in from around the world....
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...
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...
Alfred Loib was a banker in Germany before he opened a small music store and fell in love with the industry. His passion for playing music was equaled by helping other musicians find the products they sought to advance their playing. With his background in banking and his love of music and the...
Dieter Roesberg made his mark as a rock musician in Germany during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, being part of several bands that scored hits on the charts. He kept a day job, a writer for Gitarre & Bass Magazine, while touring with his bands. One day he was made editor of the magazine and he had a...
Uli Kurtinat loved playing the guitar and wanted to be a rock star! He later worked for the Hoyer Guitar Company and began making his own guitars as well as working in retail stores as a luthier and repairman. It was there that the owner discovered Uli had a talent for selling musical instruments....
Frantisek Nemecek was born and raised in Czechoslovakia where he studied advertising and helped the more than 70 instrument makers in the area to sell their products. Frantisek began by exporting a large number of the instruments outside the area and into the Soviet Union, where the demand for hand...