The Unanswered Question
by guitarplayer in Guitar Tips
If you take the time to trawl through various websites and guitar forum websites, it might come as a bit of a surprise to find that the most frequently asked question put forward by guitarists on the net is nothing to do with the more technical playing habits of artists like Edward Van Halen or Eric Clapton. It actually goes something like this:
‘How do I get Hank Marvin’s guitar sound?’
If, by some quirk of fate, you’ve not heard of Hank, I’ll fill in a few details: Hank B Marvin was lead guitarist with The Shadows, who leapt to fame as Cliff Richard’s backing group on many hits in the early 1960s. They then went on to even more success by recording chart-topping instrumentals like ‘Kon Tiki’, ‘Apache’ or ‘FBI’. Hank’s guitar sound was unique; melodic and spacey – there was even a space-age look to the instrument he was playing, too.
If you want back-up for this seemingly outrageous claim regarding Hank’s guitar sound being one of the most often debated topics on guitar forums, I can speak from personal experience; when I worked on Guitarist magazine, we used to get around one phone call a week from readers asking the same question. So I thought I’d answer it for good – although I have to admit that it might not be the answer that many are seeking… Let’s look at some details.
When Hank started out he was playing an Antoria guitar with a Selmer Truvoice Stadium Combo. Pretty soon, possibly fuelled by seeing pictures of the guitar Buddy Holly was using, Hank’s ‘boss’ Cliff ordered him a Fender Stratocaster with a maple neck which he then proceeded to use through a Vox AC15 (with a Goodmans speaker) through a Meazzi Echomatic multi-tap echo unit. It’s this combination that prevails on tunes like the aforementioned ‘Apache’, for instance.
A little later on Hank changed to another Strat with a rosewood fingerboard through a Vox AC30 with a top boost; later still he changed his echo unit to a Binson Echorec. Even later you’d find him playing a Gretsch Country Gentleman and a 1964 Burns Marvin guitar…
Now, can you see a pattern emerging here? Hank’s sound was produced by using various guitars through various amps and various echo units – but that’s a fairly unstable set of common denominators. In fact, the only really consistent factor here is the fact that all the guitars, echo units and amps were operated by Hank himself.
So are we learning something here? Change the guitar, the amp, the echo unit, give them to Hank and you’ll get his sound; his unique sonic fingerprint – which has very little to do with the gear he’s using.
My final piece of evidence comes from a story related to me a long time ago. There was once a guitarist who adored Hank’s sound and he was determined to nail it. So he studied at length what gear his hero used and set out to buy an exact match – which meant ordering a Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster with the same set of pick-ups, matching strings and general set-up etc. And he still didn’t sound like Hank when he played. He tried refining his gear by matching echo units, amps, even leads: no good, he still didn’t achieve an exact match.
So our friend decided on a somewhat desperate course of action; he went along to where Hank was playing and asked if he brought all his gear to the theatre, would Hank actually play through it and tell him which piece of kit still wasn’t delivering the goods. Hank agreed and the guitarist went off to collect his rig.
When it was all assembled, Hank picked up the guitar, played a few notes and, magically, sounded exactly like himself. The guitarist was dumfounded, but he’d answered his question at last – the piece of gear he was missing was not for sale because there was only one of them in the whole world and it couldn’t be recreated for any money you’d like to name…
It was Hank himself.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, the answer to the question, ‘How do I get Hank Marvin’s sound?’ is simply, ‘You can’t. You might get close, but you’ll never get it spot on. You’re not Hank, you’re you – deal with it!’
Now here's some food for thought...found this on the web