1986 - Duesenberg Heavy Metal

The new workshop - 80s Duesenberg Heavy Metal

The birth of Duesenberg!

Duesenberg – Heavy Metal

When our whole operation was finally running like clockwork, I wanted to create an independent guitar brand. We could have done that under "Rockinger", but that had come to be known for parts, kits and custom work.  Somehow that didn't quite fit for a new and exclusive line of guitars. A new brand name was needed!

I tasked a number of friends and acquaintances to "please think up a suitable name!" The winner receives 500 German marks.

And who came up with "Duesenberg"? Well, our eagle bass specialist, Fargo Pedder. Yeah, we used the Duesenberg name, here's your 500 marks!  We already had a certain idea of the final product: Strat style body with slimmer horns and shaped more in the metal direction.

Since tuning at the body was the trend in those years, why not do a tremolo, where you can tune the strings?  The strings are anchored to the headstock in the same way as on our headless basses. In addition, we used a cleverly designed roller saddle - not rollers on small axles, but small, centrally grooved rollers of different diameters, which move freely when the tremolo is activated. Pickups: OBL blades by Bill Lawrence, which were very popular at that time. They also had an active midboost and a Q filter to lower the mids.

The icing on the cake: a small gear for adjusting the trussrod from the side:

1986 Duesenberg Folder

Con Herrmann Frank (Victory & Accept) & Jens Gallmeier

Error as art

On one body Sascha had accidentally sanded through the paint, so that a lower layer of paint appeared. I thought it looked hot and made him sand through some other parts of it, to bring his "mistake" to perfection.  That's how our so-called dreadlock-painting came into being, i.e. painting the body with several, different layers of paint and then sanding it through again in certain places. This is basically the same thing that is called "aging" today, except that our intention was not to make the body look old and worn out.  It was more an artistic, individual design. We even applied for a patent for it.

Metal-Head

The headstock: It simply had to be metal. That's how this rather extreme design came about, with a little curlicue at the saddle level. There was also a slot that was not visible from the front, so that served as a cigarette holder. On the headstock there were six clamps that the strings were put through. These could then be tightened with caps and threaded slot head screws. To this end our necks had a round truss rod (like the old Fender and Gibson necks) but with an adjusting nut on the side where the neck is connected to the body. This worked like a guitar tuner with a gear and worm shaft. Opa Osburg punched the U-shaped bodies from sheet steel and bent them into shape.

Hip-Trem

And last but not least, the hip tremolo, a kind of knob that could be quickly inserted into the tremolo block on the back of the body, leaving both hands free to operate the tremolo from the hips.

„Pitten"

The elements with which the strings could be clamped at the top of the head and which we called "Pitten" from then on were made for us by a Mr. Roitsch in his automatic lathe shop in Südstadt. Mr. Roitsch always seemed a bit limp since the beginning of our business relationship. One morning I visited him in his office, where he immediately started to complain with a reddened face - a bottle of beer on the desk in front of him: "Oh, Mr. Gölsdorf, I feel so shitty!"

Well, shortly afterwards he had to close his business.

The Schmitt

To our "Power-Strat" with the name Starplayer, we added the “Schmitt" model based on the design idea of Thomas Schmieder.  Super extreme, futuristic and of course not for every taste, but I really liked it. We only produced a very small number of them.

We then made a special model for the bassist in Thomas Schmieder's band, of which only one was made. Soon you would see Billie Liesegang, Nina Hagen’s guitarist, with a The Schmitt on stage.

Back in Frankfurt

Once again we were at the Frankfurt Musikmesse. It's always really busy here. Thomas Schmieder presented our Duesenbergs and people crowded around. This ingenious band named "Silly" dropped by and told about their problems getting equipment and guitar parts in East Germany.  After all, they enjoyed a special status in the GDR and thus received a special visa to visit the fair.

Custom Guitars & Kits

We continued to produce a lot of custom instruments and kits. For the kits we had the best packaging: super hard single layer cardboard foam, the finest!

 B.B. King

Oh, how uplifting! I was allowed to play as the opening act for B.B. King with my band "Rollinger". This happened twice in the following years and King signed all kinds of guitars for me, which I still own today. You can listen to a few songs from our group here under "Dieters Musik".

More Duesenberg

Things went pretty well with our Duesenbergs. Mr. Stratmann had a lot to do with the assembling, and Sascha could hardly keep up with the painting. In addition, so many other guitars had accumulated that we finally built a wooden construction on Stratmann's initiative to hang as much as possible under the roof - saving space! And Winkelmann could hardly keep up with the gluing and levelling.