surfinreverb
I'm sure that Fender didn't make just one reverb unit and that others had access to them shortly after D. Dale.

well, if I remember correctly, that's exactly what happened, though. actually Dick went to Leo to ask him to make something to enhance his voice - it migh be that he wanted classic (vocal) vibrato, or just an ehancement, I forgot. So Leo took the reverb-circuit from a Hammond organ and adapted it for use with microphones et voila, Dick got what Dick asked for. However, in a stroke of genius Dick plugged his guitar into the unit, and the rest is history.

It's not that weird really, Dick was a regular at the fender factory and well aquianted with Leo personal, plus Leo and the Fender factory were physically in the middle of surf-centre, and Leo had obviously a huge interest in all things novel and technological and in young people. Eddie Bertrand has some similar stories.

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Re. Duanne Eddy.Yes... but it was a grain silo.

and yes your right Wannes,
DD said he had a flat sterile voice and wanted to sound more like Elvis.
supposedly he was learning how to surf at the time, and that was when he plugged the guitar into the tank.

Rumor has it, DD's tank was in the shop to get repairs, when the Chantays borrowed it for their recording of Pipeline.

For another Early band that used the Reverb alot, Look into the Astronauts.
they were not real early, but when RCA brought them out to So. Cal. they fixed them up with a full line up of Fender Gear. and Tanks were surely in the mix.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Buddy Holly and his brothers tiled the attic at Norman Petty's Clovis, NM studio. They used an assortment of sizes, and colors.

Buddy's "Peggy Sue" used the echo room for the drums. I guess Norman would flip the switch turning the mics on and off in the room to get that drum sound.

Not, surf, but The Fireballs recorded some good instros there. The Dave Dudley song "6 days on the road" was recorded there too.

I read the guitar player for the (California based) Tornadoes used some sort of echo before he got a reverb tank. Some of the songs can be heard on their first LP - Bustin' Surfboards. That album is one of the first 3 released surf albums.

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Stormtiger
At Capitol Records in Hollywood where Sinatra recorded, they piped the sound down into a concrete basement "reverb" room and recorded the sound of the natural reverb and of course Joe Meek (Telstar) used the tiled bathroom. They didn't get the drip of the tank but the idea of reverb goes way back.

I've read quotes from Brian Wilson about the reverb in the basement of the Capitol building....actually he said the signal from the board was sent to speakers at one end of a big concrete room, and picked up by microphones at the other end, and the amount of reverb you heard on the recording was regulated by feeding the reverb signal into the dry mix signal which would come directly from the board to the tape machine.

But, my original question really refered to the actual "drip" sound and how it was used in the early days by Dick Dale and grew into what was used in recordings like Pipeline and Baja.

Way back when, they may have also used plate reverb in the studio. Scope out this link:

http://www.platesonics.com/

Might be tough to use one on the road

So it seems to me from all I've read that the "drip" sound was a happy accident – a side-effect of the circuit, components, and especially the three knob-controls of the Fender tube reverb...? How could anyone have conceived of that sound beforehand?

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Not to hijack the thread, but reading the replies made me wonder when tape-echo really came into common use. I know Les paul was pioneering the sound in the early-mid fifties in his studio, but when did echo units like the Echoplex come on the open market? When I was in military school in 62-63 I had a roomate whose father owned a nightclub in Pittsburgh that booked Les Paul, and when he came to play he actually had a trailer backed up to the building with all the machines in it that he would run wires from and to the stage.

There was a program on a few months ago about Elvis Presley's early days. A comment was made regarding echo in the recording process, and it seems that they (Sun Records) were trying to duplicate the echo effect that they had heard on another recording. Sun used a hallway to get the echo. The one they were trying to duplicate was a tape effect. This was in the early 50's.

Re: Duane Eddy's echo

Wannes is correct, it came from a water tank behind Floyd Ramsey's recording studio. It's the stuff of legend here in Phoenix.

Here's one link. There are lots of others.

http://www.azmusichalloffame.org/bio_fr.html

Steve
The Swamp Coolers

cherndog
Re: Duane Eddy's echo

Wannes is correct, it came from a water tank behind Floyd Ramsey's recording studio.

f.t.r. I didnt say that.

WR

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