User:Wikip3t3ia/Dean Zelinsky

Dean B. Zelinsky (born February 20, 1957), also known as Dean Z, Dean Barrett Zelinsky or DBZ, is an american guitar luthier who founded Dean Guitars in 1976, and later founded DBZ Guitars in 2008. His guitar designs from the 1970s on continue to dominate rock music more than thirty years later.

Dean's guitar creations have been played by artists such as: Michael Schenker, Kansas, Leslie West, The Cars, Heart, The Doobie Brothers, Jefferson Starship, Dave Mason,  Triumph, Iron Maiden, Sammy Hagar, Def Leppard, Nils Lofgren, Nils Lofgren, Larry Crane (John Mellencamp Band), ZZ Top, and the late Dimebag Darrell from Pantera. Many others can be seen playing Dean’s guitar designs in photographs, on the Internet, in music videos, and in concerts around the world today. Dean’s guitar designs have been featured on the Howard Stern Radio Show, on TV at the Grammys Awards show, in books including a recent book by James Bond novelist Raymond Benson, and in countless magazine articles spanning over 33 years. TV talk show host Mike Huckabee (2008 U.S. presidential candidate), owns and plays a Dean Bass.

Anheuser-Busch once commissioned Dean (DBZ), to design and make a limited set of specially shaped Budweiser and Busch Beer guitars used in promotions across North America. DBZ is often cited as an influential figure in the development of modern electric instruments, bringing innovations like custom-wound electric pickups and radical shapes/designs to the musical instrument industry. His trademark guitar shapes not only look unique, but also add to the sound of the instrument, as in the radical tailpiece and headstock angles that increase sustain of the strings as they are vibrating.

Today
DBZ Guitars is a new guitar company founded by Dean, Jeff Diamant of Diamond Amplification along with his partner Terry Martin of Houston, TX. In 2008, Dean Zelinsky, founder of Dean Guitars, parted ways with Dean Corporate. DBZ Guitars[1] was launched in order to give Mr. Zelinsky "personal control over design, direction and quality". The company website features an interactive home page and a forum, where Zelinsky can personally communicate with fans of his guitars.

Early Years
Dean Barrett Zelinsky was the second of three boys born to Robert and Sylvia Zelinsky in Chicago, IL. Robert was a successful executive and business owner, whose company designed and manufactured custom fasteners; some of which wound up in early [United States Space Program] rockets. Perhaps with the DNA of his father, and his incessant curiosity, Dean began tinkering with electronics early on in his childhood; and unlike most kids his age he was taking radios apart to see what made them work & reassembling them with ease at age eight. When Dean was 12 years old, his father died in a plane crash while piloting his own twin-engine plane. His widow raised three boys, Dean, Glen and Roger in the wake of this tragedy.

Influences
When the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Johnny Winter came upon the music scene, Dean’s attention quickly turned to Rock & Roll and he became obsessed with finding out what made guitars tick. He began playing electric guitar and learned what he liked and what he did not like. More importantly, while some would have paid anything to get their hands on a vintage Gibson Flying V, Dean not only had one in-hand, but also sawed it in two, right down the middle to start measuring and setting his sites on making a better instrument. As bands became more avant-garde in the 1970’s, it was Dean’s opinion that the design of the guitars they were playing was not keeping pace with the times. While attending high school in Highland Park IL, Dean began offering his services to local music shops and to Chicago area guitar players for repairs, custom paint jobs and soon gained a reputation among local storeowners as someone to turn to for services that went beyond what most of them could offer in-house. It was actually “a first” in the history of his high school that a senior left school for the day to complete their student work program at their own company; a disagreement over receiving credit for this was something that almost drove Dean to leave prior to graduating. However, cooler heads prevailed and he earned his diploma in trail-blazing style.

Starting Up
Having had several years of repairing and re-building guitars under his belt, Dean set out to create a guitar that would sound better and equally important, play better than what he had experienced testing all the brands he could get his hands on in the repair business. In the 1970’s Gibson Guitars had a factory in Kalamazoo Michigan, where they used to provide tours for people. Dean took one such tour to learn what machinery one would need in order to accomplish setting up a production run of their own designs. After two trips to the Kalamazoo factory, this quick study yielded a plan to seek out similar equipment to start his own company. During this time, Dean’s best friend (Mathew Lynn) was battling cancer, and although he did not live to see the success that Dean would soon attain, Mathew was honored posthumously. The sadness of losing his best friend turned into a bittersweet tribute to a young man who fought cancer valiantly. What began as a tribute to his fallen friend was a guitar that in 1977, took off and is still revered today; known as the ML, taking its name from Dean’s fallen childhood friend’s initials. Dean set up his first manufacturing shops in the Chicago area, with all work being closely supervised personally by him on a daily basis. Getting people to notice the new designs was easy, and as his other designs, including the V, Z, and Cadillac started being played by the top touring bands of the day, the reputation of Dean was cemented and quickly grew.

Marketing 101
Dean took a cue from another famous Chicagoan, Hugh Hefner of Playboy Magazine fame. While on an airplane once, Dean saw an advertisement in a magazine for a liquor company featuring a beautiful woman standing in water in a provocative pose holding a drink similar to the way Playboy posed models. This led to an idea that changed the way guitars were marketed. In addition to designing guitars, Dean also had an eye for photography and his combined skills allowed him to create his own ads that caused a wave of controversy. Guitar ads for Dean’s company were featuring bikini-clad models wearing guitars, and (tastefully) little else. His early music magazine print ads and trade show marketing used female models from Playboy, and it was this cutting-edge marketing that filled NAMM Show (National Association of Music Merchants) event aisles with merchants seeking to get a better look at the guitars (and models) that were quickly becoming the talk of the industry. When Dean was warned by the trade show officials at one show that he had better tone it down in order to help keep the aisles clear, he knew he was on to something. Prior to Dean starting Dean Guitars, most guitar manufacturing figures kept a low public profile. With the possible exception of Leo Fender, nobody outside the industry knew their names. Dean broke this mold with his designs and marketing, leading People Magazine to do a feature story on Mr. Zelinsky when he was only 21 years old. Rather than just a young man who happened to make guitars for a living, he had become a celebrity in his own rite. In fact, Kerry Livgren of the rock band Kansas (Dust in The Wind, Carry on My Wayward Son), proclaimed at one time that Dean was the first guitar maker to achieve Rock Star status. He went from being known as a gifted repairman in Chicago, to worldwide guitar manufacturer, and innovative marketer whose products are recognized everywhere. This clever marketing also struck a chord with the audiences of the guitar magazines they were advertised in. Sales increased and endorsers continued to be drawn to the way these guitars played, sounded and looked whereby nearly every top band that was touring had at least one Dean designed guitar.

Globalization
In the mid 1980’s Guitar manufacturers were seeking to meet an ever-increasing demand for musical instruments. This led to major manufacturers like Gibson and Fender as well as others to begin importing guitars from the Orient. Dean was determined to keep production in the U.S.A. in order to maintain quality; at least until he could assure that the (import) quality was as good as he knew he could deliver. While he did import for a time, he wound up selling the company in 1991 to take some time off to raise a young family of his own, with his wife Suzi; herself a Playboy Playmate.

Dean re-enters the Guitar Business
In 1996, a former Music Store owner acquired the Dean Name and inventory from the company that Dean sold the rights to. While they had the critical mass that had been established in the early days of Dean Guitars, they needed someone to help bring back the magic that had propelled the brand initially, and someone to design new models. Dean was the only logical choice. Dean had been designing custom entertainment centers and high-end furniture under the business name of Dean Barrett for clientele that ranged from CEO’s on Chicago’s North Shore, to superstars like Michael Jordan from the Chicago Bulls. With his family firmly rooted, Dean was lured back into the music industry, taking on the challenge of helping to re-build the brand he started nearly two decades earlier when the offer came. What ensued was the successful transformation, based on Dean’s designs and marketing abilities. The Internet was in its early stages back then, but with Dean’s vision, and a new canvas to paint on, he built up the business with his team of Internet professionals and rep network that were eager to work with him again. Dean also did some mentoring and had a knack for spotting talent, which was the case when he spent some time at an in-store event in Dallas, TX with a young hopeful guitar player that appeared asking for his autograph. Young Darrell Abbott (Dimebag Darrell from Pantera, DamagePlan) from Arlington, TX had won a Dean ML Guitar when he was a teenager, but the chance encounter between Dimebag and Dean Zelinsky would forge a lifelong friendship that started back in the 80’s and picked up in 2004 when Dean signed Dimebag to an endorsement deal for the company that bares his name. Dean was supposed to meet up with Darrell in December 2004 to unveil the guitar they worked on together but unfortunately, their plans were cut short on December 8, 2004 minutes after Dime took to the stage at the Alrosa Villa club in Columbus, OH when a crazed fan shot him. This tragedy had a profound effect on the music world, as well as on some of the greatest guitar players in the world including longtime friends of Darrell’s, Eddie Van Halen, and Zakk Wylde, and also on Dean. Dean has written extensively about his sense of loss based on the events surrounding Dime’s passing. Tyler Zelinsky, Dean's son, an upcoming film producer coincidentally had conducted the last video interview with Dimebag just weeks before his untimely demise. The video was filmed and produced by Tyler Zelinsky when he was 16 years old. It has been featured on the Internet and also excerpts were licensed by VH1 for a special on Rock Wives. The video has also been published in Guitar World Magazine. After helping with the successful re-build of the brand, adding new designs and implementing marketing that Dean made famous, it was time to seek out partners that he could engage where he could once again have total design control, and maintain quality.

A New Day for DBZ
Today, Dean has a completely new factory with all the familiar tools used in his first guitar company, working side-by-side with the latest technology available for delivering the precision and quality necessary to support their line of USA and Import Guitars. All are once again under the same watchful eyes and scrutiny that the original company started by Dean had in 1976. DBZ Guitars is headquartered in Houston, TX with the USA Custom Shop in Northbrook, IL. The goal of the DBZ Guitar Company is to satisfy the needs of today’s worldwide customer-base that has (in part due to Mr. Zelinsky’s innovations), become very sophisticated. With his business partners Jeff Diamant and Terry Martin concentrating on the Diamond Amplifier Company based in Houston, TX, they have a symbiotic relationship that respects both companies by allowing them each creative freedoms and individual control. With respect to the new guitar designs, DBZ manufactures and imports a range of traditional electric (Imperial, Bolero, Venom), as well as acoustic (Verona, Tuscan) guitars. Its USA manufacturing is capable of producing hand-detailed and precision laser carved tops that resemble alligator, or crocodile skin (Bolero), to ultra thin completely balanced full body (Imperial) guitars, to guitars that Rock & Metal players demand (Cavallo, Barchetta, Halcyon, Bare Bones Religion Series, Bird of Prey). DBZ has over eight completely new designs available in hundreds of configurations, and selected models are available with custom graphics, and graphite saddles & nuts to help ensure they never go out of tune. The new DBZ guitar company is all about getting back to the basics, and the focus is back on the guitar, where it belongs. In the many years that Dean has been in the music business, he has seen his fair share of success and learned from mistakes. He has always maintained his upbeat outlook by seeking to be the best and settling for nothing less. According to Dean himself, “There are those who fancy themselves as guitar makers, and there are those willing to do everything it takes to become and remain viable no matter what”. The latter is a smaller, more exclusive club he is a proud member of.