July 2001

THAT ROCKABILLY SOUND By Carl Lagerberg

Today I’m gonna talk about how to get that sound we all dig so much. This pretty much for all the cats and kittens who are just getting’ into playin’ guitar and need a little push in the right direction. Real straight and to the point. No technical stuff here man, just stipped down raw rockabilly tone.

AMPS

First of all you need a tube amp that’s around 30 watts. Fender makes a great line of vintage styled amps .They’re not real expensive and they’ve got a vintage vibe to them.

The Fender Blues Deluxe is great sounding amp.It’s 40 watts and you can find them used real cheap. Ampeg makes a good amp called the Jet and the Reverb-Rocket. Once again,look around. You can find great deals in the paper or at pawn shops.

Now you gotta dial in your tone. Set the Volume around 6-7 .Treble around 8-9. If the amp has a Middle knob, you wanna set that at 5. Set the Bass at about 3-4. If it has a Prescence knob, crank that baby up to 10. If it has a little button that says Bright, push it in. If the amp has Reverb, leave it alone,I’ll talk about that in a minute. Remember, these are only suggestions. Play around and find out what works for you. You want a good,bright twangy sound.

EFFECTS

Slap-Back Echo….You hear it on virtually every rockabilly song, either recorded or live. In the old days it was created by a modified tape recorder. Then there was the Echo-Plex and after that came the Roland Space Echo. I know a lot of guys who swear by the sound of a tape echo…but I’ve ran intro problems with using them live. For one thing they’re huge and have a tendency to get bumped around. The main thing is that the tapes wear out or break. And of course that’s gonna happen right in the middle of a gig. The most convienient way of getting slap-back is picking up an delay pedal. Get an analog one tho’ because the digital ones tend to sound tinny. There are several companies making them and I’ve found that the Danelectro and Ibanez pedals are inexpensive. Look around. If you’re like me, I’m always haunting the used guitar shops and pawn shops. Sometimes you get lucky. Anyway…to get the slap back out of a stomp box , you want to set the repeat rate knob to about 2 or 3. You want a real close delay. Almost like a bop-bop. Real quick. You can also adjust it by setting the level knob up about half way.

Tremolo…That’s the sound you hear on all the Duane Eddy and Link Wray tunes. It’s a real cool effect and comes in handy on some things. Some amps have a built in tremolo or vibrato. Set the speed knob around 2 and turn the intensity knob all the way up. That should give you a real quick effect when you feel like playing Rumble or any Bo Diddly song. Like slap-back, you can also buy stomp boxes. I use the one that was put out by Boss in the early 80’s. That comes the closest to real tremolo, and they’ve also put out the Boss T-1 Tremolo. Ibanez also makes one in they’re Soundtank series. Set the controls the same way you would on an amp and if you use it with a delay pedal, make sure you go into the delay, then the tremolo and then into the amp.

Reverb….I personally don’t use it but some guy do. To me it just don’t sound right in rockabilly. It’s mandatory for surf and can be used as a cool effect but it’s just not my thing. If your amp has it built in, try it out and see what you think.

Well, that’s pretty much it. The real basics. In the future I’ll cover other stuff like guitars, recording rockabilly, the whole Vintage vs. Retro thing, playing tips and tricks,guitar tabs and whatever other crazy ideas that come out of my pomade soaked brain.