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Surf Roots No Reverb No Whammy Bar

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:07 am
by kenposurf
Dick Dales first Lp "Surfer's Choice" had zero reverb on it for the simple reason that the outboard tank had yet come to be, While most surf guitar players favored Jaguars and Jazzmasters Dick plays a Strat with NO whammy bar quite unusual. There's been tons written about Dicks part in the creation of the outboard reverb unit, the Showman Amp, the JBL D-130f speaker etc...this article covers a bit of that and is a pretty good read....
http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/P ... -dale-520/

The story according to DD:
http://www.dickdale.com/history.html



Re: Surf Roots No Reverb No Whammy Bar

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 12:54 pm
by paologregorio
Good Stuff, George. Thanks for posting. :)

An amp tech I used to go to had an original LH Strat just like Dick Dale's; IIRC, Fender built it, but no one wanted to buy it, so he was able to pick it up quite reasonably, brand new at the time, or new but unsold after a long time.

Re: Surf Roots No Reverb No Whammy Bar

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 4:42 pm
by collin
I gotta hand it to Gibson here. They really lend themselves credibility when they use their website articles for purposes other than self-promotion.

The entire article was about Fender innovations (and Dick's involvement in their creation). That's pretty big of them.


I never really though about it, but yeah.....most people associate the Jazzmaster/Jaguar and vibratos with surf, but dale never used either, nor Reverb on one of the most iconic surf albums of all time.

Re: Surf Roots No Reverb No Whammy Bar

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 5:54 pm
by jps
collin wrote:I gotta hand it to Gibson here. They really lend themselves credibility when they use their website articles for purposes other than self-promotion.

The entire article was about Fender innovations (and Dick's involvement in their creation). That's pretty big of them.
Maybe FMIC bought Gibson behind closed doors, recently? :lol: