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I found this online and don't know if it is the gospel truth or embellished for dramatic effect. Still a cool story from the early days of guitar amplification.
In 1960, a young guitarist walked into Leo Fender's shop in Fullerton, California, carrying a box of smoking components that used to be a speaker.
He set it on the floor.
He needed another one.
His name was Dick Dale. Born Richard Monsour in Boston in 1937, the son of a Lebanese father and a Polish-Belarusian mother, he had moved to California and become something the music industry had no framework for: a left-handed guitarist playing a right-handed Stratocaster strung in reverse, with strings so heavy they were closer to piano wire than guitar strings, playing rhythms borrowed from Middle Eastern music at speeds the term "staccato" barely describes — and doing all of it through amplifiers designed for polite jazz rooms and quiet country picking.
The amplifiers of the early 1960s were not built for what Dick Dale was doing to them.
The amplifiers of the early 1960s were not built for what Dick Dale was.
Dale had found his audience at the Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa Peninsula in California. Four thousand people — screaming, dancing, completely beyond themselves — packed into a building by the ocean. The music was not meant to be appreciated. It was meant to move through a person like a wave through water. Dale played at maximum volume until the paper cone inside the speaker detached from its housing, the voice coil caught fire, and the box went silent.
He drove the smoking carcass to Fender.
Fender gave him a stronger speaker. Dale took it back to the Rendezvous.
He destroyed it in two days.
Fender gave him another one.
Dale destroyed that one too.
This became their routine. Dale played until things broke. He drove the wreckage to Fullerton. Fender built something stronger. Dale broke that too.
The number of destroyed speakers is the stuff of legend. The specific tally is less important than what it represented: a musician whose physical demands were simply outside the range of any existing technology. Not by a small margin. By a factor that made the engineers realize they were not solving an amplifier problem.
They were solving a physics problem.
Leo Fender and his right-hand engineer Freddie Tavares went to the Rendezvous one night and stood in the middle of four thousand dancing fans, and understood for the first time what Dale had been trying to tell them. They could not keep patching the same design. They needed to build something that had never existed.
Fender built a new transformer rated at 85 watts, peaking at 100 watts — power unheard of for a single guitarist. Then they went to the James B. Lansing speaker company and asked for a 15-inch speaker built to specific new specifications. The result was the JBL D130F — a speaker with a rubberized suspension system, a reinforced metal frame, and an aluminum dust cover strong enough to survive what Dale would do to it.
The new amplifier was named the Showman, after Dale himself.
Dale wanted more.
They built an even larger transformer — 100 watts rated, peaking at 180 watts — and a cabinet housing two 15-inch JBL D130F speakers running in series. They called it the Dual Showman.
Dale put it on the stage. He plugged in. He turned it up.
The walls shook. The floorboards vibrated.
The speaker held.
The price Dale paid was not abstract.
He played so hard that plastic picks melted against his strings mid-performance. His fingers bled during concerts. And the volume he demanded night after night, year after year, took his hearing — permanently and irreversibly — long before the career ended.
He didn't want to be heard.
He wanted to be felt.
He wanted the music to pass through a body the way a wave passes through water — not as sound processed by the ears, but as physical energy moving through the chest, the stomach, the floor underfoot.
He got it.
And in the process, he became the first guitarist to jump from the modest volume settings of the era all the way to ten — creating the first full-scale, high-volume live guitar sound in history.
The hardware he forced into existence became the blueprint. The JBL D130F speakers and the Fender Showman amplifiers set a new standard for guitar tone and live sound that found their way into amplifiers throughout the 1960s and 1970s and beyond. Every amplifier that followed — every arena stack, every stadium rig — was descended from the equipment built to survive Dick Dale.
Dick Dale died on March 16, 2019.
The amplifiers he forced into existence are still in studios around the world.
Some of them carry warning labels near the volume dial.
They were put there because of what one musician did when the existing technology told him no.
He said: build something better.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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That's a cool story that I'd read versions of before.
No telling how much is factual and what, if any, is embellishment. But that's true of a lot of history anyway...
The proliferation of AI-generated stories is certainly making it harder (for me) to distinguish truth with any granularity.
But then again, old school historical citations like oral histories have their own issues with fidelity.
Either way, Dick was a monster, and so was Leo, each in their own way.
DC Ron
BiaB Audiophile
Presonus Studio One
ASUS I9-12900K DAW, 32 GB RAM
Presonus Faderport 16
Too many guitars (is that a thing?)
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Some of it this AI slop is accurate. Missing is the acoustic baffle integral to the Showman single 15 cabinet—in most versions, it’s mistakenly applied to the Dual Showman. Many of the versions of this story online are far worse. The two speakers in series nonsense is backwards — a Showman has an 8Ω load into a single speaker; the Dual Showman is 4Ω into two speakers and so on…
One or a pair of 85W blackface Showmans was my preferred bass rig for decades but only for local gigs. I saw Hugh Masagela in 1968 and his bassist played one—blew away the Fender Bassman. As much as I loved the sound of those, touring with tube amps was just asking for trouble.
BIAB 2026 Audiophile Mac
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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OP
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........As much as I loved the sound of those, touring with tube amps was just asking for trouble. Hence the reason I always carried spare tubes. That one time I set up and my fuse blew due to a cracked power tube envelope, and having to run up the road to buy a replacement tube was the only lesson I needed. From there on I always had spares with me.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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........As much as I loved the sound of those, touring with tube amps was just asking for trouble. Hence the reason I always carried spare tubes. That one time I set up and my fuse blew due to a cracked power tube envelope, and having to run up the road to buy a replacement tube was the only lesson I needed. From there on I always had spares with me. Ahhhh, tube jockeys. Always carry some spare 6BL8's, 6X4's and 5Y3's - just in case...
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
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XPro Styles PAK 11 for Mac & Windows Band-in-a-Box® version 2026 (and higher) is here with 100 brand new RealStyles, plus 31 RealTracks/RealDrums!
Guess who’s back again? That’s right! It’s our XPro Styles PAK’s triumphant return with the 11th edition in this series! 100 new styles are coming your way spread across the rock & pop, jazz, and country genres. And this edition's wildcard genre explores the immense and far-reaching catalogue of electronic music! The included 31 RealTracks and RealDrums can be used with any Band-in-a-Box® 2026 (and higher) package.
Special offers available until August 31st, 2026!
All the XPro Styles PAKs 1-11 are on sale for only $29 ea (Reg. $49 ea), or get them all in the XPro Styles PAK Bundle for only $149 (reg. $299)! Order now!
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XPro Styles PAKs require Band-in-a-Box® 2026 or higher and are compatible with ANY package, including the Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, and Audiophile Edition.
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No Xtra Styles PAK is complete without the classic rock & pop, jazz, and country volumes you know and love, and we’ve got plenty to share, with 150 styles spread across too many genres to list! Of course, it also wouldn’t be complete with our special wildcard volume to add a little spice and pizzazz to the mix. This year, because we loved it so much the first time, we’ve decided to make the second iteration of our SynthMaster volume, full of new sounds, interesting genres, and 50 engaging styles, all making use of the diverse SynthMaster plugin! Here you can find genres such as airy yacht rock, sultry electrotango, and even some synth soca funk. Don’t wait, pickup up Xtra Styles PAK 22 today!
In this PAK you can find: dulcet folk ballads, funky gospel country, Brazilian jazz fusion, upbeat 1980s pop, classic Americana, a plethora of breezy bossa novas, indie singer-songwriter, scintillating synthwave, exuberant electronica, and many, many more!
Special offers available until August 31st, 2026!
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Note: The Xtra Styles require the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition of Band-in-a-Box®. (Xtra Styles PAK 22 requires the 2026 or higher UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition. They will not work with the Pro or MegaPAK version because they need the RealTracks from the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition.
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