ripley (antirun) wrote, @ 2002-12-18 17:27:00

An article on Dick Dale @ Fender's website
A longtime member of the Fender family, Dale worked closely with Leo Fender and R&D engineer Freddie Tavares on many gear projects, ranging from the reverb tank to the 5-way Strat switch. One of Dale's most enduring contributions to Fender lore was the development of heavy-duty JBL speakers that would withstand his rough treatment. Dale was the pioneer of loud guitar, blowing out many amps until Leo came up with the Showman, with dual D-130 speakers and a special output transformer known to surf fans as the "Dick Dale Transformer."

In an interview with Fender Frontline, Dale provided the following insights into his gear:

"The Dick Dale sound was a Stratocaster guitar with heavy-gauge strings, and my strings are .018s, .038s, .048s, .039s, .049s, .060s, and two 15-inch D-130 [JBL] speakers. That is the Dick Dale sound. Now everybody calls it surf music.

If you would pick up my guitar, you would throw up. Because it's not a guitarist's guitar, the way I have it. I mean, I've got a string up here, a string down here, a string over here, and the neck is bowed from all the pressure. Kids ask me, 'Uhh, when you play on .060 gauge, .059 gauge strings, does it bother the neck?' I don't care. What I do is I turn around and I push through it. I've got hands of steel, so I go, 'Aaaah, do it whether you like it or not, pal.' But then you get Segovia, you get Stevie Vai, and you get Eddie Van Halen who be-de-de-de all over the place...They could not play my guitar. Because my strings are not balanced out properly. I am not a guitarist. I am a person who gets sounds out my instrument. I'll leave that up to you guys and Eddie Van Halen and Stevie Vai. That's the whole thing. I never said I was a guitarist in the first place. I just get sounds...

I play my guitar wide open. Everything is wide open. I took off my tone controls. It comes right out of the amp, what I do. So I go to the amp and I hit a note and I’ll turn up until it blossoms. I call it blossoming. It’ll go aaaaaauuunnng, like that. Like an afterburner. Right where it hits that spot, that’s where I’ll play. Then I control everything with my hands."

-- Keith Brawley, from Fender Frontline Vol. 27.

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