Twang

This morning I made myself CD-R collections of instrumental songs by Davie Allan & The Arrows, and Dick Dale & The Del-Tones.  I already had compilations I made of The Shadows and The Ventures and Link Wray and Danny Gatton.

Dick Dale (real name: Richard Anthony Monsour) is of Lebanese descent, and learned to play from an uncle who played oud.  Dale's first instrument was a ukulele. I don't think I ever noticed before how similar ukulele playing (and mandolin playing) are to oud playing, and how all of them are basically the same as the "surf music instrumentals" Dale does on a reverbed Fender Stratocaster.  He even uses Middle-Eastern scales.  Fascinating.

To me anyway.

Dale supposedly played a right-handed guitar left-handed (so it was upside down) same as Hendrix did.  However all the pictures I've seen of him online, even the early ones, show him playing lefty guitars.  Except one of him playing while surfing, where he's playing right-handed -- or the negative is reversed.

Wait, I stand corrected (or sit):

The "Dick Dale Signature Stratocaster" has an upside down neck but right-side-up body.

How about a guitar built into a surfing board? Man, does THIS look impractical!

Edit: I guess Dale strings his left-handed guitars backward, with the heavy strings on the bottom.

Normal:

Dick Dale:
Which means his "signature model" is a bastard hybrid.

Jimi generally played a right-handed guitar upside down, however he restrung it to put the heavy strings on the top:


Source

Quote :

Jimi Hendrix had a hard time finding left-handed guitars, so he flipped over and restrung standard right-handed Fender Stratocasters. That changed the string tension and microphone location and produced Hendrix's signature mix of bright highs and delicate lows. By reversing the orientation of the traditional Stratocaster, Hendrix changed which strings were closest to their magnets and, consequently, most prominent in the mix. On a traditional Strat, the highest strings (E, B) are longest. Upside down they become the shortest, so they don't have to be pulled as tight to be in tune. For Hendrix that made them easier to bend, crucial for songs like "All Along the Watchtower." For the same reason, Hendrix's low strings were comparatively tighter, which made them sound less booming and twangy.

There are four categories of left-handed guitarists.

1. Lefties who play left-hand guitars (the vast majority)
   
   
2. Lefties who have taught themselves to play right-handedly: Noel Gallagher, Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, Steve Morse, Danny Gatton, Billy Corgan, Michael Bloomfield, Jesper Stromblad, Dave Hill, Kiko Loureiro, Mark Knopfler, Gary Moore, Tomo Miličević, James Root, Duff McKagan, Nick Lowe, Joan Jett and Paul Simon
   
   
3. Lefties who play left-handed guitars, but string them backwards (low strings on the bottom) because they learned to play on upside-down right-hand guitars: Bob Geldof, Dick Dale, Albert King, Otis Rush, Doyle Bramhall and many others
   
   
4. Lefties who play right-handed guitars, but string them backwards (low strings on top): Jimi Hendrix & Elizabeth Cotten