Custom guitar craftsman makes return to Lawrence

Depending on one’s perspective, Branson, Mo., can either be a country music paradise or a barren wasteland.

For guitar craftsman Dave Wendler, it turned out to be more of the latter.

“All those guys that work those theaters down there think they’re all rock and roll stars – they want to get their gear for nothing,” Wendler said. “I didn’t sell three guitars there in the three and a half years we were there.”

In truth, scant support from the Branson music scene was only a peripheral reason that the crafty entrepreneur decided to bring his business – and family – back to Lawrence in November. With clients across the world and an almost exclusively internet-based clientele (electrocoustic.com), Wendler Instruments could probably thrive even in the most god-forsaken backwoods shantytown.

But after 11 years away from Lawrence, Wendler felt himself drawn back to the town that gave him his start in the business. As summer approaches, he’ll be spending more and more time in the garage of his east Lawrence home, where he builds his one-of-a-kind “electroCoustic” guitars. His humid one-car garage is littered with belt sanders, spoke shavers and dial calipers; his paint-drying closet is a refrigerator that he salvaged from a junkyard.

Though he still aspires to take his business to a higher level, Wendler is doing exactly what he loves – usually to the tune of 50-60 hours a week. Last year he made 48 instruments, mostly guitars for individual clients.

“If I was building 100 instruments a year I’d be a happy guy,” he said. “I’d be busier than hell, but I’d be a happy guy.”

Ropeburn and other afflictions

Shortly after arriving Lawrence in 1972, Wendler began embarking on the career path that would carry him though the next three decades (odd jobs would occasionally be necessary to pay the bills). He took on repairs while working at Richardson’s Music (now Richard’s Music, 716 1/2 Mass. Street) and later apprenticed under local luthier Steve Mason.

After getting married in 1979, Dave and his wife, Tammy, focused their energies on performing with their cover band Ropeburn. For the next 10 years, the duo and a cast of hired hands criss-crossed the state playing every roadhouse, dance hall and back-alley bar on (and off) the map.

Dave Wendler strikes a chord on one of his custom electroCoustic guitars.

“We’d play some rock, some country, some western swing,” Wendler recalled. “They actually paid you enough money to make a living back then.”

Despite the busy schedule (upwards of 150 gigs a year), Wendler kept his tinkering muse alive. By 1989, Wendler was sure he had designed the best-sounding acoustic guitar pickup on the market. He hired a patent attorney, shopped for corporate sponsorship and prayed that his innovation would catch on.

Unfortunately, it didn’t.

“The problem was learning how to use it – there was a learning curve,” said Wendler, explaining that knowledge of equalizers was a prerequisite for using the pickup. “People don’t want to have to use something that they have to think about … They want to put their feet up, get a beer in their hand and turn it up.”

Frustrated by his inability to market his invention, Wendler sought stability in a job as a quality-control manager for Peavey. He relocated with his wife and newborn daughter to southern Mississippi, where he worked for three and a half years at a guitar plant in Leakesville.

Though he remains grateful for all he learned with Peavey, Wendler still has a bitter taste in his mouth from the office politics that led to his dismissal.

“There’s an attitude with southern folks … you can’t look ’em directly in the eye and tell ’em what for or they get offended,” he explained. “(After I got fired), I was upset for about six hours, then I realized it was probably the best thing that ever happened.”

  • Reviews of Wendler’s guitarsReview of Wendler electroCoustic 5-String Fretless Bass by Tino Diaz on harmonycentral.com:“I am aware of the fact that it is almost impossible to reproduce the sound of an upright out of an instrument with a physical size and string scale several times smaller, but I never thought you could ever get this close. No dead spots or scratchy rubbing finger noise, clarity, immediateness, warmth, body, growl, fatness, character, straight-forwardness, fundamentals, likeness of unplugged and plugged sound … this is what comes to mind on plucking the strings and just listening.”Review of Wendler Electrocoustic guitar by Marty Smith on harmonycentral.com:“In the 39 years I’ve been playing guitar, I’ve never seen or felt ANYTHING like this one. If it were stolen I’d call Dave TODAY and get him started on my next one. The only thing I can’t figure out about Dave is WHY HE SELLS THEM SO CHEAP !! He must do this out of LOVE, because these things are worth WAY MORE than he charges. It does my heart good to know there are still guys out there like him, who perform their craft out of LOVE for it, and not out of GREED.”
  • More on Wendler’s guitars on electrocoustic.com

Sounds of success

Even in his last months working at Peavey, Wendler was already scheming for his next project: a hybrid electric/acoustic guitar. He built a prototype he affectionately refers to as “Number One” and dubbed his design the “electroCoustic.”

“When I got that one finished, I knew it was right,” Wendler said. “It doesn’t sound exactly like an acoustic guitar, but it’s got personality … to me it’s all there.”

The first thing people typically notice about the electroCoustic guitars is how light they are – about 4 lbs. compared to the industry-standard 7 lb. electric guitar. The red cedar wood that Wendler uses helps generate an acoustic tone, and simple electronics do the rest of the work.

“It goes pretty much against the common theory about how you’re supposed to amplify an acoustic/electric instrument,” said Wendler, explaining that his guitars use the inductance of a magnetic pickup to buffer the signal from a Piezo pickup, “But it works – it does what it’s supposed to do. I’m real proud of that.”

One of Wendler’s first clients was longtime friend Brett Hodges, who has since gone on to purchase a Wendler-made mandolin.

“This is kind of the culmination of 20 years of work on his part,” said Hodges, who met Wendler at a weekly jam session at Off-the-Wall Hall (now The Bottleneck) nearly 20 years ago. “Dave has an idea of what he wants and is relentless in the pursuit of that. He doesn’t care about conventions.”

While Tammy ran a bed & breakfast from the Wendler’s Branson home, Dave worked hard to develop and market his electroCoustic design. He placed ads in guitar magazines and used internet bulletin boards to get the word out. By the time he moved back to Lawrence, he had already sold more than 80 instruments to clients as far away as Japan. Each guitar typically costs between $650 and $1000, with custom orders commanding prices as high as $1600.

“What will take it to break is some big-name guy picking the guitars up and saying, ‘This is really cool,'” he said. “Once that happens, I’ll be as busy as I want to be.”

Sounds made by Wendler’s guitars…

Smoking the competition

Since building his first electroCoustic guitar, Wendler has since applied the same concept to fretless basses, mandolins and dobros. His designs have been featured in Vintage Guitar Magazine and also have received favorable reviews from guitar websites like harmonycentral.com.

That type of word-of-mouth advertising is crucial to the business’s success, as high commission charges prevent him from placing his guitars in local storefronts (the only exception is Richard’s Music, where his old ties allow him to pocket most of the profits).

“The problem with making a name for this is the product is so different,” he said. “The guy that’s running the typical music store – he doesn’t want to have to do a sales job. He wants it to say Fender or Gibson or Ibanez so that people know what it is when they walk in.”

Though he’s constantly striving for new business, Wendler has more than enough work to keep him busy through the hot summer months. If the Lawrence smoking ban sticks, Wendler said he might even get out and perform a little (he placed in the Top 10 at the 1974 National Flatpicking Championships in Winfield).

“That’s really what ran me out (of performing) back in the late ’80s …. I could tell how bad all that secondhand smoke was affecting me,” he said. “But come the 1st of July, maybe I’ll do it again. I’m sure they’ll still stink, but maybe they’ll be cleaned up a little bit.”

Dave Wendler repairs an instrument at his shop.