The First Endorsers, the American Dream and the Harsh Reality It began with struggle, but also with promise. A handful of respected builders and brands embraced my tools, proving they were more than a curiosity. For a moment, the dream was alive—the dream that originality could open doors and build a fair business. There were also moments of recognition. At the NAMM show in 2015, my tools were displayed in a major showcase, and the Katana Fret Leveler was noted as the most searched-for tool at the fair. For a brief time, it felt like proof that originality could break through, that what I had created resonated even on the world’s biggest stage for musical innovation. But soon the backlash arrived. Endorsements faded as imitations began to circulate, reshaping alliances and closing doors. What had once been dismissed as a joke was quietly taken, repackaged, and sold back into the same world that had doubted it. I was told, “business comes first,” as if that justified stripping an inventor of his own creation. The result was not only the loss of a business I had built with my own hands. It was the systematic exclusion from the very conversations where my creations should have belonged, while imitations were absorbed as normality. What I built was taken, and what I had to say about it was silenced. Every attempt to move forward was met with walls designed to keep me out while others advanced with the very ideas I had pioneered. Yet one truth stands: inventions deserve the right to exist. And so do inventors. This story is only one part of a much larger journey—but it is enough to show how fragile the dream can be when originality meets the harshest realities of business.

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