March Birthdays 
Hello everyone,
Please call me Noel. Might as well; it's my name. Most of this is in my user profile, but it doesn't look like I'll meet anyone if I wait for people to look at that.
My dad gave me my first guitar. It was a brand new 1963 Harmony 1215 Archtone. I still have that guitar. The guitar had these horrid finger-cutting strings (I thought) and I had no idea what I wanted to play. My guitar teacher tried to have me learn Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. If I'd known how Buddy Guy would perform Mary Had a Little Lamb, I wouldn't have quit. I'd have forty-eight years of guitar playing behind me by now if I'd never quit.
Fast forward forty-six years. My son is learning to play drums and I'm hanging around a music store while he takes lessons. Looking at walls of guitars. Do you know guitars call out to you? They say, play me. Buy me. What else could I do? Now I'm taking guitar lessons again, this time for real. In order to have something to play with my son, I buy an electric guitar. An early seventies Les Paul copy with matched vintage '59 Duncans. I learned Wipeout. That was inspired. My wife said something else.
I was bit by the surf guitar bug, big time, but I discovered I just can't create proper dives and waves without a whammy bar. I can wobble the strings I'm fingering just fine, but not the others, and it makes just those notes go sharp, not the rest. Since a whammy bar makes all the notes dive at once, it really doesn't sound the same. So, I try out several more guitars and end up with an apparently unused 2001 MIM black Stratocaster. Next up is a Fender Stage 112 SE with a nice big spring reverb tank. Maybe not big enough though.
I've made my family watch every beach and surf movie ever made. Three times! Each summer!
Here's the thing. They say you can only play what you hear. I hear surf music. It's the music I liked best when I was a kid. So far, I play it better than anything else I'm currently learning or practicing. I'm starting with the simpler tunes (Walk, Don't Run is coming along) and I'm relearning Pipeline the way Dick Dale plays it with SRV in Back to the Beach. Wish me luck with that project. I hope to work my up to the harder ones as I get better. I'll leave Nitro for later, a lot later. If I live that long. Waaaaay longer. If I aim high, I'll get closer than if I aim low.
I found this site while looking for a pedal to create the massive reverberating wave of sound that Dick Dale and SRV created for that version of Pipeline that I'm learning. The Pipeline is a wall of water and noise crashing down, and the song should have that effect on the audience; of being surrounded by the roaring sound of the wave crashing down all around.
I am totally open to tips here. Neither my guitar teacher (a great jazz guitarist) nor the owner of the guitar shop (plays amazing southern rock and blues) have a real feel for surf, and are of limited help with this, even with ninety yeasrs of guitar playing between them.
I like it here already. Life is good. Long live Dick Dale, Bruce Brown, the Chantays and Annette. Surf's up!
—This is Noel. Reverb's at maximum an' I'm givin' 'er all she's got.
