The history of the musical instrument business is full of stories, from the drab to the miraculous. Some bean-counters will busily push their way to the forefront, grabbing for a piece of history, while others quietly create. Seth Lover peers out at me from the doorway of his humble Southern California ranch house looking for all the world like an elf dressed in worn work clothes. Welcoming me inside as if he’d known me all his life, I enter a home that is rooted as firmly in the past as in the present. The charming Mrs. Lover joined us for our afternoon together, occasionally chiming in from time to time. Electronics manuals and instruments are in every corner, and the inner sanctum, Seth’s crowded two-car garage, is a wonderland of old inventions never marketed, examples of his prodigious career spanning five decades, and enough parts inventory to start a musical instrument company.

A noted creator