hlieboff59
After lurking for about a month, I decided to sign up and join this site and participate in the discussions. Hi, I'm Howard and new here. I'm from central Jersey. I've been playing guitar since I was 13 and played in a band from 1979 to 1988 off and on. We played many gigs, but mostly practicing alot. Does my age show? I'm 48. and when I got married in '88, guitar playing took a derailment. But I played every now and then just for fun. Until about a year ago, I decided to really get serious again and really learn lots of songs, scales, chords, etc. My band played a couple of surf instros and I remember them to a T! In the past 2 months, I've been hooked on surf songs like crazy. Some great bands out there. Here is my equipment. I have a 77 Black Gibson Les Paul and a 84 White Fender Strat made in USA. The Amp I have is a Peavey Mace I bought in the late 70's. With the economy the way it is, I can't afford to go out and buy new stuff. But my 50th birthday is coming and would love to get a fender Amp. My question is for everyone here, what settings does everybody choose to make or get close to get that surf sound (yes I know a reverb tank would be awesome!!!) For Treble, Bass, Middle, post-gain, pre-gain, reverb (yes 10 I know.) Hope to hear from everyone. Surf's up! Howard L

I think you're going to have a difficult time getting a definitive answer on this one...

It depends on the guitar, the player, the amp, the speaker, the effects used, the venue, etc etc etc. In other words I use different settings with different guitars, it makes a difference if you're using a reverb tank, I might crank the bass more at an outdoor gig.......................

Your best bet would be to get the amp and then dial it in. If you have a Fender guitar (Strat, JM, Jag) and the right Fender amp you should be able to make it work!

Also, I suspect your comment about reverb on "10" is tongue and cheek...but just in case it isn't...I'd NEVER run the reverb on 10 for anything including Surf!

Lastly, if that Strat is one of the 80's models w/ Lace Sensors my advice would be to ditch the pickups in favor of Fender CS69s or any other variety of 60's vintage clone (non-noiseless) pickups.

-Just my non-expert advice

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Like Danny said...I'd lean toward clean.

So, if we stick with your Strat, you're going to want to keep the gain to a minimum and control the warmth of the tone through the tone controls. On amps with all those gain knobs and master controls, I've had pretty good luck with setting the Master Volume on 10 and setting the gain controls (or fat controls) on zero which gets all that stuff out of the way. Then, I control the overall volume with the preamp volume on the amp and the volume on the guitar.

As far as tone controls go, that's a matter of taste and is highly dependent on overall volume, speaker configuration (1x12, 2x10, etc), and how the guitar interacts with the amp. For a typical Fender amp and a Strat, I usually set the treble on 6 or 7, midrange (if you have it) at 5 (maybe a bit more at lower volumes...maybe a bit less at high volume), and bass on 4 or 5. Reverb...wherever you want to set it that doesn't get too washed out.

That should give you a good baseline for clean and you can build from there....pedals, tone adjustments, etc.

welcome to sg101, howard:

i am not familiar with the Peavey Mace in particular, but I used to play a Peavey Bandit practice amp for years...and I got a decent tone out of that thing!

I would run the gain real low...just a touch was good for me, i ran the master volume up quite high. I would run the treble at about 7-8, the middle at about 3, and the bass at about 5-6...the Bandit had a built in reverberator, and it sounded okay...but, i would mostly use my old outboard St George Reverb Unit with that amp.

You Strat is a great surf guitar...

like others have mentioned, I use the guitar volume and tone pots: usually running at about 80% volume and 80% treble....and then adding a bit more.

But, Dick Dale just runs his strat full-on volume and treble....

good luck, and let us know how it's going.
-dp

Well, amps today can be either cheap or expensive depending on a number of factors: where it's made, whether its a circuit board or hand-wired and what the name on the front is. I have a new 15watt Vox that was 1500$ and a new 100w Peavey that was 500$ - and they are both all-tube and were both made in China. So it's a complex equation.

I remember the Peavey Mace! A seriously heavy 200watt tube amp with 8x6L6GC tubes if I'm not mistaken. Should be fine for a surf sound if you can actually move it to where you want to play ...

If you want to upgrade it, it may be worth looking out for some speakers as the earlier Peaveys were often let down by these - if it has the 'Black Widows' which were a JBL clone it'll be fine (and even heavier) but if not, you might want to look into replacing them with the new Peavey 'ValveKing' units which are very Surf-friendly and not expensive, or maybe check whats about on e-bay. The Mace had an Accutronics spring which should be OK till you can get a tank.

As others have suggested, I dont think it's possible to give amp settings as all combinations are different - though you Strat will be the guitar for Surf. But I don't see any reason why you cant get a decent sound with what you already have.

If you do want to look at new amps then the aforementioned Valveking range are very surfy sounding and frighteningly cheap in comparison to what your Mace would have been against the weekly wage in the 70's.

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Youth and enthusiasm are no match for age and treachery.