Saying you can play surf music with any guitar CAN be true, but it is definitely true, with no doubts, that surf music began and found its success with Fender instruments.
Since the middle 50s Fender has developed and created instruments to perform this music and, believe it or not, some of the most legendary guitars had their early appearances
with surf artists. But let's start from the beginning with just a brief introduction, you will find the sources everywhere on the web to know more and more.
(For ex. www.legendarysurfers.com/surf/legends/lsc212.html, a nice summary...)
Well, the Stratocaster was not considered a good guitar at that time (1954), not certainly the best creation, and was not easy to sell an instrument like that, small, easy,
not suitable for the rockabilly and rock'n'roll invasion of those years. But it all depends on where you plug you guitar into!
So the legend (???) says that Leo Fender (ex almost electrician who dedicated himself to build musical instruments a few years before and met his glory with the Telecaster and
Precision guitars) asked a young, but already well known, guitarist, Dick Dale, to try his new creation called Stratocaster. Big laugh when Dick (left handed) took the guitar his own way
not reversing the strings, but the thing became serious when they both found the instrument was good! Strong impact, big sound, easily adjustable to different situations.
At the same time Dick Dale was starting being loud at his concerts, he wanted more and it was time to leave contry music to reach new volume limits and sounds, like Chuck Berry did before.
The 60s arrived. Dick had lots of fans and many of them were surfers (surf litterally exploded in those days in California) and decided soon to produce a steady event
for a bigger audience in an old and unused venue called the Rendezvous Ballroom. Surf music was born and the place was crowded every week, so many people that the sound became
insufficient. Dick broke many amps with Leo trying to obtain the right sound, until Leo went to the ballroom and understood the easy thing Dick was asking for: volume!
The Fender Showman was developed, almost 100W, but what about the speaker? There were not many speakers supporting that power. The solution came from the collaboration between Fender
and J. B. Lansing (JBL) by producing the D-130F 15-inch speaker (where "F" means Fender).
This is the basic info. Check out more at www.dickdale.com and have fun.
FENDER REVERB
No musical instrument gives more identity to surf music than the famous Reverb Tank. The first prototype was developed in 1961 again by Leo Fender and Dick Dale.
There is a curious story saying that Dick wanted to sing like Elvis and asked his friend Leo about having a reverb effect for his microphone (most of Dick's shows have vocals involved).
They took the 2-springs reverb unit from a Hammond organ and installed it into an enclosure.
It worked very well, but not as well as it sounded when Dick plugged into it his Stratocaster: the result was... dwell!
A new crazy, excessive, amazing vibration never heard before.
After the prototype several models of the Reverb Unit were produced by Fender and joined other music genres also: white, blonde, brown and black, then the solid state units of the early 70s,
up to the present re-issues. The best units have been made anyway before 1966, the year considered as the end of the big surf music era.
From SurferJoeMusic.com photo archive
CONCLUSIONS
I do hope you enjoyed my story, but this is just a side of the whole thing.
The reality is that many many bands came out in the early sixties and all of them had their peculiarities: hard or sweet sounds, more or less reverb, different amps, and so on.
You pass from simple songs with easy and classic instruments, such as the early Belairs recordings (Belairs are considered the first "surf band", but anyway Paul Johnson was one of the first to
have the view of this so called "surf music"), with not much effect used but just a groovy rhythm behind, to the most sophisticated compositions with a great attention to the quality of the sound,
the equalization, the way the guitars are working together and the way the reverb itself is used not to mess up the sound but to make it particular, original and to give it elasticity and strenght
(for ex. the Astronauts, Chantays, Pyramids, Trashmen) or sometimes violence and power (for ex. the Centurians, Dick Dale).
There would be a lot to say about playin' surf music and surf music's history, not only about guitar, but also about drums, keyboards (organs and pianos) and winds. But this section is just about Fender instruments... so lets talk about Fender then!
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