"I couldn't play a solo if you had a gun to my head": The drummer behind Fender's most revered guitars.
Two drummers sit on a couch to talk about guitars, except one of us has Paul McCartney, Andy Summers, Sting, Johnny Marr and Mike Dirnt mentioned in his bio. Despite us talking big names, there’s no ‘too-cool’ air around Dennis Galuszka.
The Custom Shop 2026 Showcase doesn’t open for another couple of hours, but there are already more than 50 guitars on display at Canvas House in South Melbourne, and most of them will be spoken for by the end of the night. A Southern California native, Dennis has come a long way to be here. Only a handful of people hold the title of Fender Master Builder and he knows guitars from the inside out, quite literally.
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With such a successful career in building esteemed guitars, Dennis insists he hasn’t transitioned from drummer to guitarist.
“Not at all. I’m a drummer through and through. I couldn’t play a solo if you had a gun to my head. I play enough to know a good one.”
Dennis spent 13 years as a furniture craftsman, and it was at the cabinet shop that he first started building instruments. His boss was a guitar player who’d begun making acoustics on site, and the two of them worked it out together – but it was drumming, not woodwork, that got him through Fender’s door.
“I was playing some shitty coffee house or something, and Fred Stewart, who was one of the Custom Shop founders, was there and saw me play, and asked me if I wanted to do some gigs with him,” he says. “They found out my background, and they needed someone with a lot of woodworking experience to come in right away and do the archtop models.”
After 25 years in the biz, Dennis knows his way around a guitar. For him, the connection starts at the neck. “That’s where you’re grabbing it. It’s like holding your bestie’s hand.”
No matter the aesthetic, feel and tone are what turn a good guitar into a great one. When I ask what makes a guitar unmistakably his, he doesn’t miss a beat. “My fingerboard edge roll and the fret ends. That together is going to make a very soft feel.”
When it comes to wood types, he’ll work with whatever he’s handed. There’s no real hierarchy, but he knows exactly what a piece will do before he cuts it.
“When you have a very heavy piece of wood, it tends to make the guitar very bright. If it’s too light, it kind of farts out before it gets to the end of the stage. There’s a balance, and I think Leo just got it right the first time, and he was just using domestic woods.”
Eye for detail is his bread and butter. Dennis is one of Fender’s most sought-after relic builders, and his Masterbuilt Strats, Teles and Jazzmasters –journeyman relic and heavy relic finishes, hand-wound pickups – move fast on the collector market. For someone who has built guitars for some of the biggest and most beloved artists around – namely, Paul McCartney – the excitement and novelty of it all hasn’t worn off.
“That was a big deal. Like, that’s Paul McCartney. Mike Dirnt from Green Day actually had the idea. He wanted to gift it to Paul, so he had me build it.”
The gift was a bass built off Dirnt’s tobacco-burst Fender signature, dressed up with an f-hole and classic binding and a pickup switch that flips between a Höfner voice and Dirnt’s own – one made left-handed for Paul, one right-handed for Mike. Dirnt sent it with a note thanking Paul, on behalf of Green Day and every band he’d influenced.
“When Paul got it, he was going through his latest divorce. I guess it really shattered him, to where he just kind of shut down for a year, so this thing sat in the box in the foyer in his house, and then one day, he finally just came out and saw it, and he opened it up, and he sent this really nice letter about how it was just kind of the perfect thing at the perfect time.”
It doesn’t end with Paul. Dennis has had plenty of bizarre, full circle moments in his career, including building a pilot for Johnny Marr.
“I mentioned to him that one of the first songs I learned on guitar was Cemetery Gates. And he says, ‘oh, I did that in an alternate tuning’ , but I always did it in standard.”
“So, he goes, ‘oh, show me’, so I played it for him. And then he said, ‘here’s how I do it. ‘ And I was like – I’m having a guitar lesson from Johnny Marr. I don’t remember a damn thing he showed me. It was out of body.”
Like many drummers, Dennis was “totally obsessed” with Stewart Copeland when he was younger, so building for the Police reunion tour was full circle twice over. The job was a note-perfect replica of Andy Summers’ battered 1961 Telecaster, which was behind Roxanne and Every Breath You Take. Dennis recreated down to its eccentric mods and every last ding, scratch and hairline crack in the lacquer. Dennis spent the better part of a year on the prototype, and visited Summers’ house to spec it out.
“I walked in the door to spec out the guitar, and the first thing I saw was Stewart’s drums sitting there. It was, like, oh shit, that’s Stewart’s drums!” None of us are safe from being star-struck, including Dennis – but ultimately, he says, “they’re just guys that want a guitar.”
“You realise they’re people like us. When you’re a kid, they’re like unicorns.”
I ask Dennis how it feels to see his guitars being played, and I half expect he’d be used to it by now, but he’s still as giddy as ever.
“I will never not get a charge out of it. When I build something and see an artist, or even a good player, put their take on it – I’ll never not get excited about that. Does that make me nerdy?”
That excitement doesn’t come cheap. He’s acutely aware of how scary it is to pay so much for a guitar without touching it first. “You want to make what they want a reality. We’re very sensitive to that.”
A lot of work goes into making that happen, before he picks up a tool, from prototypes to planning. For an artist, he’ll do his homework and track down some videos to understand what kind of player they are. Once he’s got that in the bag, he’ll know how to set up the guitar and how big the frets need to be. But it’s not uncommon for someone to ask for a spec that isn’t quite right, and in Dennis’ case, honesty is the best policy.
“I’m like, ‘You don’t want that.’ Then they get it, and they don’t want that. I’m like, listen to your builder.”
Being a Master Builder comes with its fair share of odd requests, whether it’s a guitar for someone who “wants to feel pain on the neck”, or one made with a very expensive slab of pine full of big wormholes.”
He wanted me to use one of the wormholes as an f-hole, and all these crazy electronics inside, which had to be pre-mounted in a way where I wouldn’t hit the wire when I started routing for the pickups.”
For all the big names, stories and incredible guitars, what he’s after from the 2026 Fender Custom Shop Showcase is pretty simple.” The goal tonight is mainly to just let these guys know we’re human. We’re not some computer that’s gonna mess things up. We’re not bots, you know? We want to make them feel more at home with the process.”
The process is personal, and one that starts and ends with the Master Builder. While the world continues to tilt further toward mass production and automation, the Custom Shop stands its ground and trades on the opposite. “If you came to me with something just totally out there, there’s nowhere for me to go. It stops with me. I have to figure it out.”
“I want to know if there’s any artist he dreams of building for. “My daughter’s 21 years old, so now it’s to build for someone that’ll impress her.”
Right now, that’s Bruno Mars, who Dennis rates. He’s a Strat guy, and although Fender has built for him before, Dennis hasn’t been the one to do the job.
“She would think Dad was pretty cool if I did.”
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