I hope Ivan doesn't mind, but here is an excerpt from a post he made to the SG101 Yahoo Group on May 27, 2004, describing his encounter with "The Beast" backstage at a gig in Detroit.

IvanP
The three of us (Dane, Scott and me) had dinner with Dusty, and hung
out with both him and Sam right before the show and for a while
after, which was pretty damn cool. Those guys are just fantastic,
and I really love being around them. Dusty freely shared drumming
insights with Dane, and gave us a lot of stories of rock'n'roll
excesses from his days with Lita Ford, and the multitudes of other
gigs he's had over the last couple of decades. Dick was running
pretty late, which was OK by me, since we were chatting away
backstage. His Strat (The Beast!) was just casually lying there on
the sofa, so I asked if I could play it, which they OK'd, as long as
DD doesn't see it! So, they kept a watch while I plucked and
strummed for a few minutes. This is the original Strat, given to
Dick by Leo Fender, back in '60 or '61. It was originally white with
a tortoiseshell pickguard, but around '64 he repainted it gold
sparkle, and put a white pickguard on it. As everybody knows by now,
the strings on it are huge. I've gotten really used to pretty heavy
strings (12-52), but these were definitely thicker than that (he
claims 15-60). He's got a pretty low action on the guitar, though,
so it felt comfortable to play the guitar. It's beat to hell,
though, it's in a really bad shape. The lower frets are TOTALLY
gauged out! There's no way he can play a note on the first few frets
and sustain it in tune. It just wouldn't happen. Also, the nut is
partially cracked. And four lower (I think) strings are strung the
wrong way around the tuning heads - instead of clockwise, they're
strung counterclockwise, so there isn't a straight pull from the nut
to the heads! Very weird! I pointed this out to Sam, who was
shocked to see it. He asked DD's guitar tech, and the guy told him
that Dick personally asked him to string it that way. I don't get
it... Sam also told me that two of the pickups in the guitar aren't
original - they were stolen when the guitar was in a shop in the
seventies, and the replacements are stock seventies Strat pickups -
the secret of DD's tone is finally revealed! Dick doesn't use the
backplate, and he's got five springs tightened to hell, and then a
wooden block wedged in between the bridge and the body, to ensure
that the bridge doesn't move one iota (I think Clapton's Strats are
set up the same way). The paint is in really bad shape, too,
especially where the arm rests on the body, where there is hardly any
paint left. The neck is quite worn, and the lacquer, where there is
any left, has turned brown. There are only bits and pieces left of
the Fender logo on the headstock, too. But, with all that, the
guitar has a very resonant and 'woody' sound when strummed
unplugged. It actually really sounded like his tone, even unplugged,
which was a bit surprising but cool. Like I said, because the action
was pretty low, it felt comfortable to play. And it's a very light
guitar, which is also quite nice. He's also got a prototype
pickguard on the guitar with a tuner built-in. One of the switches
on the guitar engages the tuner, and there are little LEDs on the
side facing his head so he can quickly tune.

Since I played Hank's original Strat (that Bruce Welch now owns and
which was used to record Apache, Man Of Mystery, and all the other
early hits) back in September at Shadowmania North America in
Toronto, and now DD's Strat, I feel very privileged. In fact, I'm in
disbelief that I played the guitars of the two guitar players who
probably influenced me more than anybody else! And funnily enough,
they're from the same era: Hank's Strat is a '59, one of the last pre-
CBS maple-necked Strats, while Dick's is from soon after that.
Fender really was making great guitars back then….

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Ooh, the Beast's dirty laundry...
That was really interesting. Thanks Brian and Ivan.

badass!

Ivan,
Out of curiosity, is the neck profile a typical slim early sixties, or one of the fatter, oval C-shapes?
Thanks!

I was thinking about the Beast turning gold. It must have happened in the Spring or early Summer of '63, right between the recording of King of the Surf Guitar album and the Beach Party movie (he's shown in both with a white Strat) and the East Coast tour. The album release and the tour start were in July. The tour lasted six weeks, during which Dick taped the Ed Sullivan Show, and you can see the gold Strat there. So, I would speculate that the Strat got the gold color in order to capitalize (pun intended) on Capitol's release of King of the Surf Guitar, right before the tour. I have read somewhere that the reason he painted it gold was because he was the "King" of surf guitar, and given there was a new album of that name, that seemed like a good tie-in. There was a major promotional push at that time, and this was probably Dick's contribution to it. So, my best guess at the date of the 'new' paint job would be May-June 1963.

Ivan

Ivan
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Ivan, I am curious... which two pick-ups are the 70's?

Its pretty weird, they would steal 2, and not all 3. Its also pretty weird he did not just replace them all with stock 70's. I wonder if the 1 vintage combined with the stock 70's have an effect on the tone that 3 70's would not have.

It also looks like the pups are strewed into the body as low as they can go or is it just the picture?

Pretty cool story regardless, thats for posting it way back when.