Collectible Guitar NovDec 2016 | Page 36

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. 36 Nov  Dec 2016 CollectibleGuitar.com