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. T...
Charles Urban knows horns! As the former president of American Plating, he has worked with the top brass instrument makers to perfect the art of plating instruments. Chuck is also very pr...
Mark Ureda was a young engineering student when he dreamed of working for JBL. He had that chance in 1976 for one day (that is a good story), but when that did not work out he joined the...
Joe Ussery was the supply manager for the Baldwin Piano factory in Greenwood, Mississippi when he first joined the company in 1973. He later helped manage the raw materials for Greenwood ...
Arturo Valdez is known around the world as the “guitar repairman to the stars.” With his shop located on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, California, Arturo has worked on thousands of guitars, ...
Pete Valentino noticed that band instrument repairmen often had a difficult task in replacing worn pads on flutes and saxophones. He had burned his hands on many occasions and thought tha...
Jay Valle began working in the organ industry in the 1950s and has witnessed some rather amazing changes. He was part of the organ boom of the 1960s and 70s that brought the instrument in...
Lucas Van Der Mee, Principal Design Engineer for Apogee Electronics, has a fascinating background in Live Sound and studio engineering. He spent ten years on the road as an audio engineer...
Willem Van Dijk started his career with Gibson Guitars as a sales rep for their European branch in 2005. With a focus on his sales and technology background, Willem helped expand the comp...
Bernard Van Doren is the grandson of the founder of Vandoren Paris, the world famous reed maker. His grandfather, Eugene, formed the company in 1905 based on his technique of making high ...
Ray van Straten began his love of music when his parents bought him a kids piano when he was four years old. He went on to study classical piano performance, as well as jazz arranging wit...
Willy Vassilopoulos joined the Ovation Guitar Company in New Hartford Connecticut to follow his love of woodworking. He soon took part in the production of the instrument, which was orig...
Alan Vater’s grandfather, Jack, established a music store in New England and found a need to produce his own brand of drumsticks. Young Alan recalls watching his grandfather hand dip his ...
Dante Vater grew up in the family’s drumstick factory just south of Boston. Dante’s great-grandfather started making drumsticks for his music shop (Jack’s Drum Shop) just one year before ...
Ron Vaughn began his career in the music industry as a drummer who was always looking for new gizmos that could produce the sound he sought. After creating a long list of clever products ...
Dennis Vaughn began working in the Selmer factory in Elkhart, Indiana in the early 1970s and stayed on when the company merged with Conn. His first bench job was for Armstrong Flutes bef...
Tim Vear was interviewed for the NAMM Oral History program in the months leading up to the 75th anniversary of the famous Shure microphone. Tim covered much of the history of this iconic ...
Giuseppe Vecchietti, known throughout his career as Beppe, primarily worked for three companies over his long career. All three were located in the same Italian Marche region by the Adria...
Joe Veillette took a luthier class, a class by Michael Gurian back in 1971 and never looked back! He became so interested in guitar building that he teamed up with Harvey Citron and form...
Manuel Velazquez was one of the greatest guitar luthiers of the last one hundred years. He was born in Puerto Rico in 1917 and handcrafted his first classical guitar when he was still a t...
Koob Veneman’s father started the first Veneman’s Music Store in Holland, an idea copied by Koob in Maryland in 1960. Koob, like his father, was a luthier who designed his own instruments...
Ted Veneman grew up in his father’s music store. As early as 1975, Ted was etching out a mail order catalog under the name “Music Emporium,” which was much earlier than most mail order ca...
Marcello Vercelli was trained as a mechanical engineer and landed his first job in the music industry at RCF. RCF is an Italian based professional loudspeaker manufacturer, and a big OEM...
Marc-Pierre Verge came to work on computer generated musical instruments by first studying acoustics. He and his colleagues at Applied Acoustics Systems used physical modeling to recreate...
Arturo Vicari is the founder of AEB Industrials which he established in 1974 in Bologna, Italy. He is also the CEO of RCF Spa which is based in Reggio Emilia (Italy). Both companies desig...
Rosa Villa is the Lead Supervisor within the drumhead shipping department at Remo Inc. headquarters in Valencia, California Like many of her co-workers, Rosa has been working for the co...
Greg Voelker is the inventor of a specialized drum rack system that has been used by top artists since the 1980s. His first rack was distributed by Premier Drums, which led to a full ser...
Jürgen Voigt comes from a long tradition of musical instrument makers in the region of Markneukirchen starting as early as 1756. His grandfather and great-grandfather were bow makers and ...
Alex Voishvillo is the mastermind behind many of the innovative products at Harman, mostly based on his passion and knowledge for all things related to transducers. Born and educated in R...
Clemens Von Arnim is the CEO of Louis Renner & Co., producer of the Renner Action and Hammerheads for pianos, the company his great-grandfather was involved with from the very beginni...
Mathias von Heydekampf enjoys the pro audio side of the music industry. He was working part time in his father’s car hifi company when he discovered his passion for the pro Audio busines...
Tedd Waggoner began his career in the music industry in 1969 and soon joined the Selmer team. Tedd worked in most of the positions for the company but found his greatest satisfaction whe...
