Ballew's Music - Guitars, Amps & Effects Pedals

Dave Storey, Owner of the Dava Company:

 I first got involved in the music industry in the mid-1970s when I started building my own guitars. I've now built a total of 10 guitars.

In 1979 I was living in London, England doing some guitar repairs. At my workshops I started making my own hardware and developing a tremolo I was working on. At the same time I was meeting some famous guitar players including Dave Gilmour, Rick Fenn, Phil Collen, Les Davidson, Nico Ramsden and others.

  When I started showing my new tremolo to these guys there was a really positive response, so my next move was to take out a patent application and find someone to produce it.

  In 1982 when I moved to the US I found Gary Kahler, or really, he found me. A year later my tremolo design went into production as the flat and stud mount Kahler Tremolo. It was a huge success; almost everyone from Gilmour to Jeff Beck, Neal Schon, Alex Lifeson, Phil Collen, Adrian Belew and about 40 other major players used it. I went on to design 11 different products that went into production.

  Never one to sit still and always thinking of better ways of doing things, my next great breakthrough was the Dava Control Pick. I started the Dava Company in 1996 and we now have over 20 distributors worldwide. In the last 10 years we've sold millions of picks.

  Three years ago we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico and launched our new range of picks, the Dava Rock Control Series. These have insert-molded tips made from different materials.

  In the last few months we have just added two more unique models, Dava Grip Tips and Dava Precision Points. Like all Dava picks, they are specially designed to make playing the guitar easier, more expressive, and a blast to use. Keep an eye out for our future products. I think that you'll be really amazed!

Dave Storey