The DR Factory Tour on Friday the 13th.......

[billbass1]

Along with my bandmate guitarist Al, yesterday we took the drive up the Garden State Pkwy to Emerson NJ.
The home of DR Strings.
I punched in the address onto my GPS system and we arrived
about 40 mins. later.
At first we thought that the GPS system was wrong when it informed us that we had arrived.
The building is located in a unassumeing semi-residental neighborhood.
What made it most confuseing, was the fact that there really is no sign out in front of building indicating that it was indeed
DR Strings.
Upon more carefull inspection we noticed a couple of DR String
Bass packages in one of the small windows.
The door was locked and we knocked.
Right away a gentelmen answered and I asked for
Anthony Corona, with whom I had pre-arranged the visit.
Anthony himself soon came out and welcomed us as we entered the room in the front, which happend to be the sales office.
Part of my confusion I discoverd was in anticipating a public showroom.
Anthony clarified that DR does not sell direct to the public and prefer a low key profile, hence the reason for no signs.
The sales office appeared quite busy and there was a board on the wall indicating sales for the past several months.
I began asking some questions randomly as we began the tour.
DR employes around 100 people.
Most of rooms appeared crowded and busy with people, raw product, finished product, machines etc.
We first passed by the Quality control room which had two young women in it ,quickly and efficently going thru completed
bass strings one by one, this was the last stop before they are packaged.
I noticed small tables in most rooms that appeared to be used during breaks and lunch times and were unoccupied at that moment . Anthony explained that DR has been so succesfull with its continued growth, it has no seperate areas left for it's employees munch times. As the tour began to progress his statement became quite apparent.
Next stop was the main machine room where at least a half dozen operators on individual machines were, and yes here it is............winding indivdual strings one at a time.
Of course the machines were doing most of the work, but the operators were skillfully guiding them.
On one machine, a new employee was being trained by one of the expeirenced employees.
OK, from what was apparent and explained to us was, that only two processes are not done right there on sight in the DR Factory. The first is raw material. DR does get their core wires from several diffirent suppliers. Anthony requested that I not reveal the names of those suppliers. Had did I find out those names ?
Well the names were right on the rows and rows of boxes waiting to be used. He did explain that they use the same suppliers that many other string makers used.
Alright, I agreed not to say anything here about who those suppliers are.
The other process is the string coloring.
Apparently, from what I understood, there is only one place that can color the strings. It was not told to us who it was, nor did we ask. After the strings are assembled, the ones that DR puts the colors on, are sent out to another facility for that process which involves haveing the color applied thru a heating method. " Oh, so the color is not sprayed on ? ", one of my questions. No, heat is used somehow.
Then upon coloring, they are sent back to the DR Factory.
Anthony did say that they had been haveing some quality control problems in the consitency of sets of a strings uniform color. At times, what they assumed to many, a package of colored strings may have diffirent indivdual shadeings of the the same color. He also said they hope to correct that issue.

I am gonna take a break for awhile now guys, will be back and eventually continue over the weekend................hope you are enjoying this thus far.

[Rawkabilly]

That's pretty cool. Bill. I love DR strings. Thanks for sharing.

[810wmb]

thanks for the update!

why didn't you steal me a couple of sets of the new flats

looking forward to the rest of the story

[One Drop]

Great stuff, looking forward to more...

[billbass1]

Well, after seeing the main machineing room and hearing about the string coloring process, we moved onto the shipping and receiving room.
Again, DR employees busily moving about, several times we had to dodge around the guys shuffeling the crates of strings that were ready, and good to go.
OK, " so how much business is done domestically here in the USA ? "
About 50% currently, Japen and Germany are big markets.
Even Finland. " Finland ? "
Yes, it seems they have a lot of, " metal heads ", who really like DR.
I beleive it was about 42 diffirent countries total internationally.
I am not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but I did ask if
DR Strings makes strings for other companies.
The answer was a flat unequivocal, " NO ".
There was not much left to the tour itself.
Overall, we were left with a Very Positive Impression of
the factory and company in general.
After the tour concluded we were usherd into a unoccupied
corner room with chairs where we were asked to be seated and relax.
Several moments later DR president and founder Mark Dronge
came in and met with us .
Mark is a very outspoken and vibrant personallity.
He sat and spoke at length, about 45 mins. at least, and he talked about his Years at Guild Guitar during the 1960's and MANY of the musical greats he got to meet and befriend at that time.
I started a thread over on The Guild Bass Forum at the Dude Pit, vintagebass.com, where I posted highlights of our disscussion. If anyone in intrested in Guild Basses, then please visit that site and check out the thread.
I put a set of DR Sunbeams on my 1973 Dark Star Guild
M-85 II yesterday afternoon.
My first set of DR strings by the way.
I have not gigged with them yet, but they sure do sound real sweet here on the home front...........

[jim primate]

i love DR's. i tried a ton of different strings but stopped at DR since i doubt i'd find one i liked as much as i like these.

[PrecisionBass]

Wow, I'm away from home for another month or so, haven't been working since mid-June as I'm at Stanford University right now... the descriptiveness of your tour, I could tell EXACTLY where you guys were when. I had predicted Anthony would give you the tour, if not Mark. Mark is my direct overseeing boss, with Anthony and Tom being my supervisors (though I also consult Tony and Pat once in a while). But yes, the factory is VERY hard to find (otherwise I'd have had a job there about two years ago, if I could have found the place) and fairly small.

A LOT of metalheads in Europe are big with our strings. I know Alexi Laiho of Children of Bodom (I think they're either Finnish or Swedish) HIGHLY endorses the strings, as do a French metal band, Gojira.

At the waiting room, the desk with the computer underneath the guitar-shaped clock was my desk .

I absolutely love my job, and I couldn't be happier. I'm glad to see you enjoyed your trip there.

EDIT: BTW, before I left, I did get to test a set of the flats and compare them agains the roundwonunds. I'm impressed! I found that they don't lose their initial brightness for a good day or two (imho). After that, I had a silky-smooth feel and a VERY jazzy tone perfect for walking basslines, but I could also roll up the tone knob and do some rock. I was very pleased. In fact, next set I get may be DR flats

[bass-shy]

This is a very cool and informative thread. Thanks.

Also, I've been using DR Strings for about five years now and I've never encountered any issues........including string inconsistancies. Thanks for making such a reliable and great-performing product.

[PrecisionBass]

if people want, then we could create a thread dedicated to questions on the DR factory, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

[bluesquidd]

I saw in that latest Bass Player Mag. that Jeff Berlin uses DR Low Rider Nickels after using Carl Thompson for over 30 years. I've tried Carl Thompson's strings a few times and thought they were almost identical. I didn't use CT's Strings that much because it was kind of a hassle ordering 'em from him. The last set I ordered , they were all completely dead. Every string. And the previous sets lasted a long time.
I wonder who made CT Strings 'cause I know he didn't wind them him self.
Does any one remember the ad in Bass Player Mag. about 10 years ago showing Jeff Berlin and Les Claypool endorsing CT Strings and at the bottom it showed the "By DR"? But what I've heard, DR doesn't make strings for other companies like GHS or who ever.