Dick Dale String Gauge

[Chistopher]

I read in an old Guitar Player magazine that Dick Dale used a 16-60 set of strings! At that point he's not playing a guitar, he's playing a suspension bridge. Have any of you played anything this crazy before? A lot of my guitars would warp with that much tension.

 

[Chris Pile]

Re: Dick Dale String Gauge

It's not crazy if it works. Dale's Stratocaster has a working truss rod, and that's all it takes to counteract the tension. Maybe the problem is your po' widdle girlie hands.

Little known fact: the bigger the string is, the less distance you have to bend it for a certain note. I know a country player here in town who covers a lot of pedal steel tunes on his old 335. He sounds a lot like Amos Garrett - triple string bends, up and down, just a terrific player. The first time I saw him I complimented his playing, and asked if he used light strings. He drawled, "Yup. Pretty light. Fourteens".

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Dick Dale String Gauge

I use baby strings myself, 11s. But I did some further research into The Beast. But first, a picture:

The OG is on the left. On the right, the Fender signature model. If you look they are two very different animals. The OG is a left handed Strat with right handed strings designed to be played left handed. The wanna be is a right handed Strat with a reverse bridge pickup and a reverse headstock. Now, another picture:

It is rumoured that the ol King of Surf never really liked standard guitar tuning, which could explain what the 5 letters on the pickguard are. But who knows? I sure don't. But then again, maybe Mr. Dale needed to remember a line or is just doing it to confuse me personally.

Even the wiring is disputed. Some think the mini toggle bypasses the three way for a dedicated neck and middle position, others think it merely connects the neck and middle tabs on the 3-way making it automatically:

1-Neck and middle
2-Neck and middle
3-Bridge

If anyone has info, I would love to know. I only started researching this today, so I might fall under the "a little bit of knowledge causing big problems" category.

 

[Ayrton]

Re: Dick Dale String Gauge

From Dale's wiki...

As of 2010, Dale continued to play with his original reverb unit and Showman amps from the early 1960s, continuing his practice of stringing his left-handed guitar upside down. The unique features of this guitar include a toggle switch that bypasses the three position blade switch to activate neck and middle pickups only.

Dale uses very heavy strings on his Fender Stratocasters, gauges 16 to 60 in standard tuning.

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Dick Dale String Gauge

I had my only electric guitar (an '84 or '85 MIJ Strat with EMG SAs originally...then with CS '54's) strung 15–58 from about '96 through a couple years ago. I didn't get another electric till around 2003, so that's all I played for about 7 years.

As for why it's not that way any more...

Several years ago, the guitar got water damaged without me realizing it initially. It sat in a slightly wet gig bag for months. A mis-aimed rotating sprinkler came out from someone's lawn and hit me while I was on my bike. I had totally forgot about it by the time I got home, so I just stowed the guitar. I pulled it out months later, and was horrified to discover it covered in corrosion, with some black spots, and a neck crack right over the truss rod adjustment nut (heel end on this guitar). I stripped it down to level, dress, and polish the frets. Then I accidentally screwed up the truss rod by attempting to remove and replace the battered truss rod nut, which I did not realize had fused to the truss rod with corrosion. The upper end of the truss rod broke loose down by the head. The MIJ models then had a shallowly toothed truss rod anchor that will blow out and rotate forever if it is forced, rendering the rod useless.

So I dug the rod out with a teeny-tiny router bit and a chisel, and fabricated my own replacement rod with parts from McMaster-Carr. As I was doing this, I just got this wild hair up my ass, and decided that I was going to give the guitar a semi restoration combined with a semi '80's-'90's vintage style facelift. I decided to go back to the EMGs that had been sitting for ages, with a custom wiring scheme to go with them, and I tracked down a vintage black Kahler in need of some work. I pulled that apart piece by piece, cleaned it, lubed it, replaced a few parts, and installed it. I ordered black tuners for it, and a new black guard. Now it's basically like an '80's MIJ Strat that got modded by some heavy metal guy when it was still young. Still gotta seal that truss rod in and re-oil the neck, though...

 

[MikeRocker]

Re: Dick Dale String Gauge

It is rumoured that the ol King of Surf never really liked standard guitar tuning, which could explain what the 5 letters on the pickguard are. But who knows? I sure don't. But then again, maybe Mr. Dale needed to remember a line or is just doing it to confuse me personally.

IIRC, didn't DD have one of those pickguards with the tuner built into the edge installed in The Beast? I believe that explains the letters written on the front. I saw him in a little club here in SoCal a couple of years ago, he was still totally rockin', God Bless him!