overlooked rather than celebrated. However, it reminds me that I share my birth year of 1953 with the beginning of the Suzuki company, the owners of Hammond.
Mr Manji Suzuki started his business life, hand building harmonicas in a rented farm store room and has since grown his company to one of the most respected manufacturing operations in Japan . Still firmly at the helm, and staying true to his original concepts of innovation and improvement, Mr Suzuki has successfully evolved the company into one of the worlds leading manufacturers of quality musical instruments and the company takes enormous pride in attaining the precision quality certification, ISO 9001. This level of certification is usually found only in the aerospace and high technology industries.
Suzuki bought Hammond in 1991 and applied the same high standards of design and manufacturing that had brought success in other areas. Ten years later, a relatively small, by other Japanese music company standards, but dedicated team of development engineers and designers combined their passion for the brand and technical expertise to create the new ‘Vase 3’ sound engine system, that is at the heart of the latest ‘new generation’ Hammond instruments. The continued success and assured future of the Hammond brand has a lot to do with this very talented and understated R&D department.
Sales success is all about the product and its features, which are there to satisfy prospective customers. The very latest SK stage keyboards are a reflection of this and, by the comments of proud owners, these models have certainly delivered. But it is just important to know that when you look beyond the knobs and switches and examine the technical aspects and construction, you find products manufactured to the very highest standard, a feature that is rarely mentioned in promotional material but which enables all of us to sell and buy Hammond instruments with true confidence.
Barrie Freeman
Managing Director
Hammond Organ UK
