I visited Warwick last year, which is based in Markneukirchen. That's a city in the middle of the German musical center. Höfner was based there, before they (and Framus) were moved to the west by the Americans. Christian F. Martin was born in Markneukirchen and there are still a lot of violin builders there. Also a Framus museum, an independent instrument museum. Several musical congresses, etc.
One evening, just after dinner in a local restaurant, a guy walked up onto me. He heard I worked for a bass magazine. 'Here's my card. Mail me for some free stuff.' Today he send me four sets of different Tomastik-Infeld strings:) He works there. I'm a lucky bastard.
