A Brief History of Rauen Guitars

The history of Rauen Guitars began in the basement of Denny Rauen`s townhouse in Park Forest, Illinois. The space was minimal (400 sq. ft.) but it worked! Six months later, Denny was invited by Greg Bayles to set up shop in his store Make`n Music. With help from friend David Peterson, a finishing facility was set up in Gary, Indiana, and business grew quickly. Within about a year the shop moved into an old gas station in Steger, Illinois. This would be the home of Rauen Guitars for the next five years. During this period the shop specialized in custom building guitars.

Some of the wonderfully talented people Denny had the pleasure of working with include; Dave Peterson, a finisher from my days at Dean Guitars, Barry Meyers, a skilled guitar builder, Randy Dritz, one of the original owners of S.D. Curlee, Joey Drada, a very talented individual who today owns a number of tattoo parlors, and Rob Blue, a great young guitar player at the time. Today Rob is in film production in Hollywood CA. Paul Druecke, an artist as well as luthier has left his mark at Rauen Guitars. Son Joshua Rauen, a fine luthier, was a natural talent and asset during his years at the shop.

When moving the shop up to Milwaukee Wi., Denny shifted the focus of his work to restoration and repair as he had been building instruments for the better part of ten years and found the restoration and repair work to be far more challenging. One of his biggest challenges proved to be finding new help to replace the wealth of talent he worked with in Ill.

In 2000 Denny purchased a building in the historic Riverwest area of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is the present home of Rauen Guitars. The shop, now with over 5000 sq. ft. makes it one of the largest facilities in the country dedicated to restoration, repair and custom built instruments.

Click an image for a tour of our present home.