For how seemingly simple surf guitar tone appears, it's pretty elusive. Like with cooking, the fewer ingredients you have, the better quality they need to be. There is no disguise or distractions.

Surf guitar is generally a guitar, reverb, and amp. Sometimes an early fuzz like the Maestro FZ-1A was involved. But primarily guitar to the reverb to the amp.

Each of these three ingredients needs to be correct to truly capture the classic surf guitar tone of artists like Dick Dale and the Ventures.

I’m a sucker for drippy spring reverb. I listen to a lot of surf and psychobilly music. You will find records from The Ventures and The Cramps in our vinyl collection.

Spring reverb isn’t just “reverb” to me. It’s an extremely specific flavor. One that just can’t be recreated digitally. Digital technology has come far, but I don’t feel there is a digital equivalent of spring reverb yet.

I’m a big ol’ fan of spring reverb. I don’t always use spring reverb, but when I do I tend to be pretty particular about it. I never have bonded with digital emulations of spring reverb. There is just something about the interaction of the guitar, the amp, and the springs that needs to happen in real time.