I still think this video of their Pipeline duet looks weird - http://youtube.com/watch?v=52FpuqD3W5M - DD playing his lefty guitar strung righty but upside down, and SRV playing his righty guitar with the reverse headstock. (Doesn't look like a lefty tremolo bridge on SRV's though, does it?)

I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing.

That's weird because Dick always uses roundwounds and has said many times that he never cared for flats.

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i don't know if what he's saying about flatwounds is real accurate, he says a lot of things from back then that may not be true. for instance, he says that miserlou was recorded without the reverb unit, but you can clearly hear drips in it, maybe he just honestly forgot a few details about the 60's.

'checkered flag' to me sounds like he's using flatwounds, 'mr. eliminator', the album right after checkered flag, sounds like thinner rounds, maybe that album is when he really started using roundwounds, and maybe forgot after all this time. it's not like a huge deal and a life-changing event to remember changing what kind of strings you use, and it was over 40 years ago. i'm sure in 40 years i will have absolutely no memory of when i switched to flatwounds...

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Last edited: Sep 27, 2009 22:57:44

Norman
The sound changed do to the fact that they added studio reverb (live chamber) on the capital recordings and he would use in between settings on
the three way switch. flats are dead and he would not use them. Now i'm not saying he didn't try them as he's tryed alot of things but i dought they stayed on he's guitar for more than a day if that long.

yes, but most of checkered flag shows a more thuddy dead sound from Dick's guitar. just listen to 'motion', i can't even imagine roundwounds sounding like that. if he did use rounds then they must have been REALLY dead and smooth sounding roundwounds...

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zak

JoshHeartless
if he did use rounds then they must have been REALLY dead and smooth sounding roundwounds...

Keep in mind that 60s strings were quite different from what we've got nowadays. For one, the cores were round, not hexagonal in cross-section. That makes for a much stronger fundamental with less twang. Much higher nickel ratio in the wraps now, aside from "high end" stuff like TI and Pyramid, the vast majority of mass-produced strings are nickel-plated steel which sounds much brighter. You're also hearing an all-tube signal path on the recording, which will take a lot of the higher frequencies and round them off, the recording process is likely to be a far bigger factor in the overall sound than the strings he was using.

hmm, those are some good points. however, i think you'd agree with me that 'mr. eliminator' sounds a lot more twangy, and either that isn't Dick doing lead for most of the album, particularily the vocal tunes, or he got some really thin strings! you can hear some intense bends,!

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There's quite a bit of change in Dick's guitar tone from album to album, and it's possible that some of that is due to different strings he may have been trying. But I doubt it. Consider all the different factors that will have a much bigger impact on the recorded tone: the EQ and volume settings on the Showman, the type of the mic used, the placement of the mic, the type of a preamp used, the EQ at the preamp or the mixing board, the type of a limiter/compressor used at the recording side and its settings, the EQ of the overall mastering, etc. There's really no way to intelligently talk about the impact of strings on the tone on those records, I think, especially if we're talking about a difference of one gauge size.

My personal reading of what happened to his tone over the course of those albums is the following:

Surfers' Choice - he's recorded pretty much how he sounded - aggressive, heavy on the reverb, the Showman cranked up at least around 7 or more. Given that the album was produced and released by his dad, Dick got his way with the sound.

King of the Surf Guitar - joins a major label, gets a producer (Jim Economides) - Economides and the elder Monsour dislike each other, butt heads a lot (this is a documented fact) - Economides and the Capitol engineers are probably horrified at Dick's volume preference and there's a lot of struggle in the studio to turn down Dick's Showman, not understanding the connection between the tone and the volume level. However, Dick is a big star at the time, and he mostly gets his way - listen to Hava Nagila or Ghost Riders - his Showman must have been cranked on those.

Checkered Flag - Economides and the engineers start winning, beating Dick down to turn down the Showman. His tone is much more anemic and weaker on this album compared to the first two (Night Rider and The Wedge being the only exceptions) - in fact, I think his tone here is the worst of any of his sixties albums.

Mr. Eliminator - the tone is stronger than on Checkered Flag but it still doesn't have the rage to it that it does on KOTSG or definitely Surfers' Choice - must have been a hard-fought mini-victory by Dick to get to that point, even.

Summer Surf - Dick throws in the towel, stops writing aggressive fast songs and instead focuses on more melodic and intricate stuff that better suits the cleaner tones the producer and engineers are forcing on him. The only aggressive track is Banzai Washout (brought to the session by the studio sax guy Steve Douglas), and Dick's tone is on the weak side there. But he really seemed to have dialed in the cleaner tones for that album. Listen to Tidal Wave - fantastic.

Dick has spoken at great length about the frustrations he faced trying to get his true guitar sound captured on tape in the sixties, and reading a few different sources about the studio situation, I think what I list above is a plausible scenario. I think it must have been pretty tense in the studio over his volume issues at most of the Capitol recording sessions, and if the Capitol guys won, Dick must have been bumming about his tone while recording those tracks.

That's my take on it, anyway.
Ivan

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Last edited: Mar 01, 2008 06:40:14

Remember that Surfers Choice was recorded live, with some overdubs.
that affect a recording a whole lot.
and possibly the added reverb. but I dont know that for sure.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Jeff(bigtikidude)

JoshHeartless

IvanP
His tone is much more anemic and weaker on this album compared to the first two (Night Rider and Nitro Fuel being the only exceptions) - in fact, I think his tone here is the worst of any of his sixties albums.

funny, i actually think his tone in that record is the BEST it has ever sounded, and is quite possibly my favorite out off all the different sounds i've heard from a guitar.

checkered flag is also my fave album of all time. every song is spectacular. i like albums with themes that follow through the whole thing, and it definetely does that. not to mention i LOVE gary usher, and i think his songwriting has a great impact on why that it album is so great. to me, dick dale was always good, but checkered flag for me is what made him great.

Well, there you go, then. Different strokes for different folks. To me it's his weakest album. But whatever. (BTW, even Usher said that the stuff he worked on with Dick suffered from too much label control and interference - he said they should have just let him do his own thing, but they didn't - even Usher wasn't so hot on his work with Dick, for whom he had immense respect.) One thing though is that having heard him live probably some ten times or more, his guitar sound on this album is furthest away from his live sound - which probably hasn't changed a whole lot over the last 45+ years. This is why I assume that he lost the battle with the producer and the engineers. This is not the sound that made him famous.

Ivan

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I'm building a replica of Dick's guitar. It's going to be exact, but right handed. There are a few things I would like to know about Dick's guitar, such as the neck shape, serial number, size of the neck, etc. I just sent the body off to be painted last week. I should get it back hopefully by the end of this month.