FEATURE
MARK DRONGE: From Guild Guitars to DR Strings Bob Cianci
A non-descript one-story brick building located
in a small, light industrial area of an affluent
Bergen County, New Jersey suburb, is the
home of DR Strings. There’s no sign on the
façade or the door, no indication of what lay
behind those walls and doors, something that
gave this writer some doubt that he had the
right location. But, upon entering, there was no
mistaking the fact that I had walked into a very
busy shop, with workers laboring over string
winding machines. The “executive offices” were
rather plain and even spartan; there were no
fancy accoutrements or furnishings, no plush
furniture, none of that pretentious corporate
façade that screams, “fake.”
After a short wait, I was introduced to Mark
Dronge, president of DR, and we exchanged
pleasantries for a few minutes before getting
into specifics. Mark is the son of the late Al
Dronge, a tough NYC street kid, a former music
store owner and founder of the Guild Guitar
Company. It’s no secret that Guild has been one
of the leading American guitar manufacturers
since the company was founded in 1952 in
Manhattan by Al Dronge and a partner, who
would later sell his share of the company to
Dronge in 1954. In a stroke of serendipitous
luck, Dronge hired much of the key labor force
of Epiphone when that company moved to
Philadelphia in 1951. Guild concentrated on
archtop guitars to start, due to Dronge’s love
of jazz.
Al’s son Mark joined the company in 1960, so
let’s begin our interview right here.
[CG] Can you tell us about your early years
well. I was the only young person working in
time. One of the members of the group The
at Guild?
the guitar business at the time. Don Randall at
Tarriers told me we should make an acoustic
Fender was my hero; a brilliant marketing guy.
12 string, so we did. We saw a big market for
Mark: I used to come in on holidays and
We started making flattop acoustics because
the acoustics opening up, so we did the flattop
weekends and work doing various chores for
of the boom in folk music. I lived in Greenwich
6 and 12 strings. We did very, very well with
my dad. A few years after joining Guild, I became
Village, hung out with musicians, and used to
them. Guild still makes, and always has made
sales manager and handled artist relations as
go to the clubs like Gerde’s Folk City all the
great acoustic guitars.
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Nov Dec 2016
CollectibleGuitar.com