"Twin Peaks" sound

[Proglodyte]

Anyone have any idea what sort of guitar/amp set-up was used in the "Twin Peaks" TV series. In particular, I'm interested in the chord wammy bends.

[Braxat]

Welcome the forums o.o triple post?

[Proglodyte]

Oops! My first time using this forum. Know how I can delete the redundant two posts?

[Bluesape]

You can't, but I just did.

[Proglodyte]

Thanks.

[rw2003]

The theme from Twin Peaks is very haunting... I would say the guitar sound is a "dark twang" if that makes any sense!

 

To emmulate that sound you have to start thinking Duane Eddy.

 

You'll need something like this to play on:

 

http://www.sweetwater.com/images/items/CSDERBNH-large.jpg

The Duane Eddy Signature Model from Gibson. Also consider something similar (hollow-body electric with a bigsby tremelo tailpiece) from Gretsch or Guild.

 

Put that through a nice clean amp and add in some tremelo and delay/echo. Maybe roll off the highs a bit too!

 

That should be a start!

[The Geoff]

Single coil pups, preferably DeArmond (or GFS), bags of treble & bass, few mids, loads of reverb and downtune at least one whole step.

 

(I was doing this yesterday, funnily enough).

 

Geoff

[Proglodyte]

Thanks rw2003. Ill have to pull out my old Duane Eddy LP. Yeah, dark twang by rolling off the highs. Perhaps thats the famous underwater guitar sound that they refer to on Vinnie Bells website? But they wont reveal it on the site; trade secret apparently. How sure are you that its a hollow-body? Are you basing this on some knowledge about the actual Twin Peaks sessions or just on the sound? The main issue for me though is cash. Lately, most of it has gone into my home studio, so I havent got that much to spare for axes. Though I started off on my dads old hollow-body Silvertone, Ive been an SG player most of my life, but Id like to add to my arsenal something with a Bigsby. I guess the question then is whether I should go for a hollow-body (a Gretsch, the DE Signature you point out, or something similar), or for a solid-body with a Bigsby. Jerry Jones Guitars makes some cool Danelectro types and offers Bigsbys as an option. Im also wondering about pickups. You see, in addition to the Twin Peaks sound, Im interested in surf guitar (or neo-surf because I think the genre is open to all sorts of harmonic perversions) in general. It seems that a lot of the early surf guys used solid-body Danos and other funky short-lived creations. And the Jerry Jones guitars all use 2- and 3 lipstick pickups with various wiring options. (Maybe Ive just got Jerry Jones on my mind right now.) Also, I tend to think of Gretsches and other hollow-bodies as rock-a-billy or country guitars. Id buy both (hollow and solid), but I guess Im trying to narrow it down to one. Perhaps I should just put out the question whats the ideal surf setup? or Bigsby solid or hollow?--I also have a similar question re Rickenbacker 12-strings: 360/12 hollow a la G. Harrison, or 660/12 solid a la T. Petty?--and see what other forum members thoughts are. Then again, maybe its just two different sounds that require two different guitars. Alas: $$$. Any further thoughts of yours would be greatly appreciated.

[Proglodyte]

Hi Geoff Byrne, If you read my above response to rw2003, you'll see that I too have doubts as to whether Gibson-style humbuckers are really the right sound for "Twin Peaks"/surf. Your mentioning no mids jives with my intuition about surf sounds in general (though rw2003 might be right about rolling off the highs a bit for the Twin Peaks sound). I've always lamented that, since Van Halen (great player though he is), lead guitar, by being so overdriven and saturated, has lost the spikey-transient definition of, say, a G. Harrison or J. Page solo. As for lower tuning, that certainly seems to fit with the "Twin Peaks" sound. Above, I mention Jerry Jones. You ought to check out their baritone guitar. Again, you can get it fitted with a Bigsby. Sure would like to have one of those. Finally, speaking of pickups, a guy at a local Gretsch dealer here says that their guitars with FilterTron pickups are the way to go for surf. Any thoughts?

[picker]

I got a Bass POD XT a while back that has a patch called "Twin Peaks" on it. It's very definitely a Duane Eddy sort of sound, Lots of reverb and medium speed tremolo, but the guitar still has a very definite twang. I wouldn't call it a "dark" guitar tone, exactly. But I would say it's a clean big-box guitar tone, mostly on the bridge pickyup. They used to use a lot of that same sort of guitar sound as background music for TV westerns, and when I hear it, I always think of cowboys.

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

Oh... I always thought it was some sort of baritone?

[The Geoff]

I really like the old DeArmond pups - in fact Gretsch used them on some guitars.

 

You can get a 'cheap' Duane Eddy badged as a De Armond T400 by Fender (at least I think that's the one) but it's no longer produced and it's not that cheap :0(

 

G.

[jimash]

Definitely DeArmonds. Maybe a Gretsch Duane Eddie.

 

If you can stand it the TWin PEaks movie has some extended

hypnotic musical sequences.

[Gabriel E.]

It was some sort of Gibson archtop if I remember correctly. Definitely copping the Duane Eddy sound.

[Guitar55]

The guitarist on the Twin Peaks soundtrack was Vinnie Bell, famous for his "underwater" guitar sound. YOu've also heard him on LOTS of hit records from the 60's.

 

http://www.spaceagepop.com/bell.htm

 

http://www.vinniebell.com/

 

(oh well, I just noticed that his name was mentioned above).

[Scott Fraser]

I'm with Kramer Ferrington, it always sounded like a baritone to me.

 

Scott Fraser

[Guitar55]

In the top link I posted, they refer to it as a bass. But they might be wrong.

[DC Ross]

It depends on which song & version you're listening to. For the theme, one version sounds like a baritone, one sounds like a bass

 

Go here for the DVD trailer (w/ the music of Angelo Badalamenti):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/trailers

 

Hear the other version >> here <<

 

On a side note, a lot of the filming was in North Bend, just a few miles down the road from here. They still serve the pie

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

Well, I'd try out some baritones before mortgaging your firstborn and buying a Gretsch or whatever.

 

If it was Vinnie Bell playing, the guitar might well be a Danelectro baritone, which only costs a few hundred bucks.

 

And if you're dead set on recreating the exact sound, bear in mind that you can do incredible things to a guitar's sound once you're in the studio, and that many of these sounds are impossible to recreate outside said studio.

[Scott Fraser]

<>

 

In which case it might be a Fender Bass VI, which was really more of a Jaguar baritone version than a true 6 string bass as we think of them today. IOW guitar string spacing, rather than bass string spacing.

 

Scott Fraser