So, I’m not trying to be crazy purist just to be a crazy purist. But I am trying to sort this surf tone thing out. I enjoy playing with light to medium gain for rhythm, and more gain and delay for lead stuff. That’s when I’m not playing surf.
Now that I am playing surf/garage/spaghetti, I’m dialing back the gain and delay. My delay is a slap back. But the gain level... I’m trying to figure out how far I can go with the gain while being still somewhat traditional, toneally. Now, I realize that a lot of surf is almost totally clean. I’m not down with that as a player. I have to have a little more cut and gain. I just don’t want it to sound too modern.
So anyway, I guess I’m thinking somewhere between Brian setzer and link Wray. So, how do you guys get that? Pedals or amp? I have mostly 70s sf fender amps(twin, super, pro). I could get them black faced for a little more grit, I suppose. I dunno. Just curious how much gain you guys use, and how you get there?

Guitarist for Black Valley Moon & Down By Law

I prefer the sound of the amp breaking up rather than an overdrive/distortion pedal. Live I will use a clean boost pedal (Diamond Boost/EQ) to hit the amp a bit harder. Using my pick attack, and guitar's volume knob I can go from clean to a bit of crunch.

Rev

Canadian Surf

http://www.urbansurfkings.com/

Sam,
I'm pretty sure than in the 60s there was no separate gain control on amps, just volume. There would be dons natural distortion if turned up loud, and also as Mike n Ivan stated, just playing harder.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

The original sound was clean with occasional crescendos into a bit of natural overdrive. One sound I dislike, whether in Surf or other genres, is the sound-change when a distortion pedal is kicked in. IMHO, natural is where it's at.

Above is my pedalboard. Both the Blue Nebula and the Topanga have the ability to serve as a clean preamp. Because the Topanga is used in buffered mode the preamp is operative whether the pedal is engaged or not.

The Blue Nebula has something a bit more complex. There is a Level control to match the volume of the pedal when engaged with the volume when bypassed. There are also a Gain and Pre controls to, basically, specify how hard the first FET drives the second FET. These can be used to overdrive the signal, but they aren't really made to function that way. If you push the first FET up a ways, there will be a richer spectrum of overtones highlighted in the clean signal. This can give you an "on the edge of breakup" sound, but isn't really made to bring you into breakup. In fact, the pedal has a red LED which illuminates when the pedal begins to clip.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Squid wrote:

Using overdrive or distortion well is a high art that VERY few have mastered. Generally when it is used, lots of reverb and/or delay is needed after it. Low power Class A all-tube amps can sound good. I like the original Ibanez Tube King and the ProCo Rat, but I have quit using them because I like not using them better. Most common distortion effects and overdriven amps are crude.

I use distortion only for a few songs that seem made for it (e.g., variations of Flight of the Bumblebee, Green Hornet, Harlem Nocturne, Lone Ranger theme), and sometimes just for the bridge in a song to give tonal variation. For real surf guitar songs, no distortion please (except briefly in the bridge perhaps).

However, rehearsing with lots of distortion is sometimes great fun. I seem to sound good with lots of distortion, even on recording. But then when I listen a day or two later I feel disappointed.

As I see it, about the time that the Stones did “Satisfaction” and the rise of Jimi Hendrix, about a year later, distorted guitar became all the rage. Distortion was nothing new, but in the mid to late sixties it because all but ubiquitous in the Pop/Rock world. One effect of this was that the sound of a twangy clean guitar became associated with Country and was not likely to be successfully used in maintstream Top 40 material although Folk Rock continued to use clean guitars (mostly accoustic). When The Doors Riders On The Storm came out in 1971 the use of a clean electric guitar with tremolo was quite unusual.

Personally, the heavier distortion which dominated for so many years left me cold. Like every other kid with an electric guitar, I had turned my amp, all 22 watts of it, up as high as it would go and experimented with that sound, but it was hardly my stock & trade. In the meantime, distortion-producing devices proliferated and the lexicon of guitarists came to have more words to describe forms of distortion than Inuit have to describe snow. After about 30 years of playing Jazz, I returned to Rock because Surf had once again become fashionable and there were some Rockabilly artists out there using relatively clean sounds.

BTW, my ideal rig, in fact the one I used at my last gig, utilizes a 5 watt, Class A, amp with a Vox-like front-end, complete with an EF-86 pentode in the first preamp stage. This gives me a wide plateau between clean and broken up. EF-86s have a different response curve than 12AX7s amp this amp has a sweet spot where is sings, but. Not to the point of breakup. It’s not perfectly the Braownface Fender sound, but it’s a decent substitute.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

One thing you experiment with is the height of your pickups. Closer to the string can give you some cool heavy crunch, especially when you pick hard. It’s somewhere between a distortion pedal and a cranked Twin, but with way more control. If you pick lightly you’ll have very little crunch and you can play nice and clean. Then without touching anything, just dial up the picking and get your crunch.

One of my sf Twins has a master volume, and it’s pretty easy to dial some crunch in or out with the gain switch. Past 4 on that and it’s super crunchy, 3.3 - 3.5 is pretty perfect for me.

Dan Izen

Daniel Deathtide

I'm both sides of the coin on gain. I have the MXR pedal Stratdancer mentions; however I got it not because of its gain control. I got it because it had the best 3-pot tone solution I'd ever seen in a pedal. When I do use it, the gain is barely cracked at all. It is used to get the sound in a small house room that I would get turning the amp up in a working situation.

If I had my Vibrolux up where it's really happy (and I've done that) the pedal wouldn't get touched - the sound of the amp's output stage really working is the goal, however it's arrived at.

I can see Mr. Fender (who loved clean sine waves) rushing up to the stage of someone in a club, waving his arms, "You're over-modulating, you're over-modulating!!!"

Do what you have to do for the music you want to play.

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

I mentioned it in other threads but the only gain I add these days is from using my Quilter as a pre via the effect send to my 63 bandmaster. On the pedalboard is a clean boost that is always on that gives a slight boost to the drip of the surfy bear, then into the SB, then into the PB200, then into the bandmaster. The PB200 has the gain set to a little past half way but the limiter is about 2/3's to smooth it out. It's the smoothest, warmest, most organic gain I have found to make the amp sound like it's on 7 when it can be set low volume wise.

The Kahuna Kings

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Kahuna-Kings/459752090818447

https://thekahunakings.bandcamp.com/releases

Last edited: May 06, 2018 06:05:49

I’ve tried to rehearse and play live with only EP always on, but something is missing, especially live. With OCD on some 11-12 o’clock it just goes right for me, this is the sound on the video. Is it too gainy for your taste? Theres pretty much gain.

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

New Single is out!

https://waikikimakaki.bandcamp.com/album/rhino-blues-full-contact-surf-single

Waikiki Makaki

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

stratdancer wrote:

What it sounds like playing First Wave.

Love that sound! To hear, not to play)

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

New Single is out!

https://waikikimakaki.bandcamp.com/album/rhino-blues-full-contact-surf-single

Waikiki Makaki

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin