I am the inventor of the Helpinstill Piano Pickup. The first unit was built for my own use while I was in college, because I wanted to play a real piano in a band. My degree in Electrical Engineering gave me the skills to approach this piano problem from a new direction. I originally had in mind a totally new kind of keyboard that could compete with a guitar. Where no one before me had any desire to put magnetic pickups in a piano (because it would obviously sound like a guitar,) that was exactly what I had in mind when I built the first one. I was ready to become the Jimi Hendrix of the piano, with my strange-sounding new keyboard. No one was more surprised than me when it just sounded like the piano! Setting aside my initial disappointment, I went on the road fronting my own band. I had found the piano solution for playing with a full band!

Many audiences who heard these early performances proclaimed me to be the "best piano player they ever heard." This was probably because I was the FIRST piano player in a band they were able to actually hear! This new piano secret was let loose on the world in 1972, when this same unit was eventually purchased and used on tour by Elton John. Such a dramatic introduction quickly gave rise to the burgeoning company I formed to manufacture and market the product. Over the course of 10 years we sold thousands of these electromagnetic systems to every famous keyboard player on the planet for a very simple reason: they're the only thing that really works.

In 1982 I sold the company to become a full-time musician again, and I've had a rich and satisfying career as one of Texas' most prominent piano front men, Ezra Charles (see my website at ezracharles.com!) When the original company making the pickups went out of business in 1985, I bought back all my patent rights, but never had any inclination to make more pickups for two reasons; digital pianos had undercut our market for anybody except purists and superstars, and most of the pickups we made originally still worked!