# Surf guitar sound **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 9, 2007, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384 "2007-06-09T18:15:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2007, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/1 "2007-06-09T18:15:06Z")
How is the “surf guitar” sound created? I’ve just been listening to a lot of it on Cult Radio A-Go-Go. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2007, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/2 "2007-06-09T18:23:05Z")
From [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=417669): [QUOTE=Eltanin] One of the big keys to the surf “sound” was a guitar running through the [Fender Reverb unit](http://www.fender.com/products/search.php?partno=0217500000) - very prominent on Dick Dale recordings, but was also used by the other bands you listed. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2007, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/3 "2007-06-09T18:26:55Z")
Also, Dick Dale’s signature sound was the result of playing the guitar as though it were a mandolin. He was also left handed but didn’t restring his guitar–the weird sound became a signature of surf music and pretty much everyone who came after emulated it. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2007, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/4 "2007-06-09T18:33:17Z")
For us non-mandolin players, what does that mean? ---
**Author:** ![TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2007, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/5 "2007-06-09T18:51:48Z")
That linked thread answers your question. In short: lots of spring reverb, liberal string-bending and usage of the whammy bar, single coil pickups rather than humbuckers, minor and seventh chords, staccato picking and palm-muting instead of open strumming. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/6 "2007-06-09T20:00:52Z")
[QUOTE=Walloon] For us non-mandolin players, what does that mean? [/QUOTE] playing notes by rapidly picking the strings instead of picking the note once and letting it draw out and sustain. Think the mandolin sound of an Italian movie soundtrack. Now apply that sound to the surf song Miserlou, by Dick Dale used in Pulp Fiction… Fender guitar - preferably a Strat or a Jazzmaster Tons of Reverb Tremolo/Vibrato (you know that sound that Green Day gets for Boulevard of Broken Dreams or The Smiths get for How Soon is Now? That sound…) ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2007, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/7 "2007-06-10T03:03:24Z")
Thanks everybody for your answers. I’ll be busy looking up what “whammy bar,” “single coil pickups” and “humbuckers” mean. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2007, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/8 "2007-06-10T15:55:34Z")
There’s a essay on Dick Dale’s hardware over on his website: [Dick Dale History](http://www.dickdale.com/history.html) ---
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2007, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/9 "2007-06-10T17:32:11Z")
Mild hijack… I’ve been listening to Takeshi Terauchi and the Bunnys _Let’s Go Classics_ lately. Excellent and surreal. “…an excellent collection of Western Classical songs. Highlights include excellent fuzz versions of Beethoven’s _For Elise_ and _5th Symphony_. Other instantly recognizable tunes, _Flight of the Bumblebee_, _Swan Lake_, and \*Carmen \*are done eleki style. This record is all balls sans wimpy string arrangements.” From here: [http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/09/japanese\_surf\_v.html](http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/09/japanese_surf_v.html) These would be fun to have in Guitar Hero… ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2007, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/10 "2007-06-11T00:54:44Z")
[QUOTE=Walloon] Thanks everybody for your answers. I’ll be busy looking up what “whammy bar,” “single coil pickups” and “humbuckers” mean. [/QUOTE] If you are serious, please say so - happy to provide definitions. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2007, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/11 "2007-06-11T01:25:45Z")
Here’s a quote about the Dick Dale sound that a poster over at Harmony Central posted today: > [@](#): > > "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." ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_B.Phart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Capt\_B.Phart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_B.Phart)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2007, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surf-guitar-sound/407384/12 "2007-06-11T02:11:55Z")
I remember John Peel playing a Dick Dale track and saying “I don’t know how he did that, but there was one bit that sounded exactly like someone dynamiting cars in the next county”