ave Wronski is one of surf rock`s most innovative

ave Wronski
is one of surf
rock’s most
innovative
(and unsung!)
heroes. Blending ferocious
double picking, chilling
glissandos, and vibrato
bends with a crisp, reverbdrenched twang, he takes
listeners on a thrill ride that
ricochets between serene
and menacing.
guitars have been traded or sold along
the way, several have stuck around for
the long haul.
Trade Secrets
“My first Stratocaster was my ’57,”
he said. “Its neck is dated 1-57, and the
body’s spring cavity says 12-56. The neck
has a nice shoulder, big and round like
a typical ’56 but with a nice V shape.
I had a ’64 Strat that Wayne Charvel
refinished Salmon Pink, which I traded
toward an all-original ’53 Telecaster I
still have. It’s got a relentless midrange
that stands out in a track, no matter
what surrounds it. The neck pickup
is amazing, too. It gives it that Jimmy
Bryant richness and clarity without
sounding boomy.
“Another fave was a refinished sun-
Wronski portraits: Laura Darlington. Guitar photos: Dave Maddux.
Wronsk i ca me
to prominence in the early
1980s as a member of
Jon & The Nightriders,
t h e legendary second-wave
Southern California surf band that
revived instrumental guitar rock in the
days of skinny ties and synthesizers.
For the past 12 years, he has been one
third of Slacktone, arguably the most
respected, talented, and hardest-rocking modern-surf band on the planet.
The high-energy Slacktone experience
– a maelstrom of thunderous crescendos
and surprising twists and turns – conjures the requisite images of surfers and
their bitchin’ waves – only these waves
are in 3D, HD, and Smell-O-Vision!
While he often is associated with a
colorful pack of Fender Jaguars of varying pedigrees – which he unleashes at
Slacktone gigs from Huntington Beach
to Prague – Wronski has spent the
past three decades slowly piecing
together an impressive yet utilitarian collection of vintage
guitars, amps, reverb tanks,
and other effects. And
while some
burst ’63 Strat,” he added. “Unfortunately, someone flattened its fretboard
radius. I traded it toward my black ’58
Strat. I had the body refinished because
the previous owner painted it with a
paintbrush. This one has a lower-frequency emphasized-midrange sound
than the other ’50s Strats I’ve played. It’s
not as easy to lose in the mix, especially
when using a lot of reverb, which tends
to thin the sound. I’ve heard this type
of midrange on only one other Strat
– another ’58.
“For me, the difference between 1950s
and early-’60s Strats is that the rosewood-fretboard guitars can have a kind
of scooped-midrange sound compared
to a harder, more mid-attack sound of
’50s maple-necks,” Wronski said. “The
rosewood sound can work very well
with heavy-handed
rhythm playing,
l i ke i n t he
style of
Stevie Ray
Vaughan,
The Wronski
“Slackercaster.”
but they can
get lost in a mix
if you’re playing single
notes. I’ve played some greatsounding ’60 and ’61 Strats – very
delicate, beautiful, with a magical
high-end – but they were just a
little too hi-fi-sounding to carry the
52
VINTAGE GUITAR FEBRUARY 2008
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weight in a three-piece band when I
was doing straight-up rock through
Marshalls.”
Early ’80s Surf Revival
In 1980, Wronski traded his role
playing in “a long-haired rock band
playing through two Marshalls” for
a second-guitar spot with Jon & The
Nightriders, a California-based band
formed in 1979 by guitarist/surf-rock
historian John Blair, who had selfpublished his Illustrated Discography of
Surf Music, 1961-1965 the year before.
The band, which included bassist Jeff
Nicholson and current Slacktone drummer Dusty Watson, already had released
an LP, Surf Beat ’80.
“Jeff asked me if I wanted to go into the
studio and record some surf instrumentals,” he said. “I said definitely – for fun,
purely. I loved that stuff. The Ventures
made me want to play guitar when I was
a little kid. But it never, ever crossed
my mind – not even for a second – that
you could play this stuff in a bar. It was
just too weird.” Weird turned insane on
October 3, 1980, when a pumped-up Jon
& The Nightriders floored thousands of
unsuspecting audience members while
opening for The Surf Punks at Santa
Monica Civic Auditorium (with Dick
Dale in the middle slot).
“I started reading up on The Surf
Punks and how most of their opening
acts would get spit off the stage,” Wronski said. “I thought, ‘Okay, they wanna
play it like that.’ We decided to fight
back musically and not let the audience
get the upper-hand. That shaped
our whole attitude of ‘relentless, hard, short
a nd fa st : Just
shove it down
their throats,
This ’57 was Wronski’s first
Fender Stratocaster
1958 Fender Stratocaster
1963 Fender Jaguar
1953 Fender Telecaster
and they
don’t get to have an
opinion about it.’”
Setzer’s ’65 Jaguar
Photos from this era show
Wronski with a myriad of to-die-for
guitars, including a refinished ’61
Sonic Blue Strat, a ’71 custom-made
Gibson Explorer with PAF pickups and
a ’65 Jaguar in Shoreline Gold.
“I bought that ’65 Jaguar just before
The Nightriders’ 1981 European tour,”
Wronski said. “I wound up selling it
to Brian Setzer in the early ’90s. I was
looking for a Jaguar to sound more like
Jon Blair’s ’63. The ’65 Jaguar – and a
’65 Strat I had at the time – had too
much flat midrange. When I bumped
into Setzer a few years ago, I asked him
if he still had it. He said, ‘Yeah, man, I
love that guitar. I played it on track 12
on my CD (“Hollywood Nocturne” on
The Dirty Boogie)’.”
After several early-’80s releases,
including Charge of the Nightriders, Jon
& The Nightriders stopped performing
and Wronski found himself testing the
waters beyond surf. “I worked as an
engineer, played guitar on demos, and
mixed sound for shows at country clubs
1950s Gibson Les Paul Junior
1956 Gretsch 6182
1960 Martin 5-18
continued on page 130 ...
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VINTAGE GUITAR FEBRUARY 2008
53
and golf tournaments,” he said.
“In the late ’80s, I played around
Hollywood with a singer named
Breta, who went on to sing backup
in Animal Logic with Stewart
Copeland and Stanley Clark, and
then with Duran Duran.” In 1990, Wronski started working
at Fender’s production facility in
Corona, California. “Right after I
started, I was negotiating a break
for a European tour!” he said. After
touring and recording with a rock
outfit called Brighton, he fell out of
the band scene.
Slacktone: Surf with a
Warning Label
“In 1995, I was thinking I should
do the instrumental-surf idea
again,” he said. “I happened to
run into Dusty Watson at NAMM
and asked if he’d be into it. He said
‘Sure!’ I had written several songs
while in Jon & The Nightriders
that were part of the live shows, but
weren’t recorded.”
Wronski and Watson were joined
by bassist Mike Sullivan. “It immediately clicked,” Wronski said.
“Mike was solidly, squarely on the
beat. I probably play just a little
behind, due to all the rock playing,
and Dusty is the master of pushing
– on the very leading edge of the beat.
So that’s the way it felt – that very
big sound. After two rehearsals, we
went to Clear Lake Audio in North
Hollywood to record Slacktone
– Warning: Reverb Instrumentals,
and Dusty did only one take each the
first eight songs we recorded.”
In 1998, Slacktone was the house
band for MTV’s “Rockin’ Jock
Super Bowl” special. “I got to play
‘The Star Spangled Banner’ solo,
surf-guitar-style, with everybody
standing up,” Wronski said. “I
was so happy I didn’t hit a wrong
note!”
After touring Europe in 2001,
Sullivan was diagnosed with cancer.
“It was terminal, and we lost our
friend within weeks,” Wronski said.
“Sam Bolle, a friend who played in
Agent Orange with Dusty and did a
couple of tours with (the reformed)
Jon & The Nightriders in 1999 and
2000, began playing with us. He fit
so well, so we just locked down and
kept playing.” Killing the Buzz
Today, Wronski employs his
working-man Jaguars with Slacktone. These include an Arctic White
mid-’90s import with pickups
by former Fender Custom Shop
master builder Fred Stuart. “Fred
grinds down one side of the bridge
and puts it in backward,” he said.
“That way, you can adjust it without
having the strings hit the back of
the bridge. Strings should make
contact with the bridge saddle and
go back to the tailpiece – and not
130 VINTAGE GUITAR
FEBRUARY 2008
hit anything, except, of course, the
Buzz Stop.”
The Buzz Stop, a piece of hardware that attaches to the tailpiece
of a Jaguar or Jazzmaster, uses a
roller that the strings go under. The
benefit is the added down-pressure
of the strings against the bridge
saddles, and it makes for a more
solid contact. “The Buzz Stop helps
reduce rattles and the tendency of
the strings to jump out of the bridge
saddles when playing aggressively,”
Wronski said. “Without it, a lot of
string-vibration energy is lost by
way of the rattles. I use them on
all my Jaguars, except for my ’63
sunburst, which doesn’t seem to
need the Buzz Stop because the
angle and height of the neck pocket
seem optimal for a good rattle-free
setup. The ’63 is pretty well-made;
the saddles were better on those old
guitars, too.”
Jaguars Built for Speed
Wronski’s Fiesta Red Jaguar has
a ’62 neck on a newer body, 250K
pots, a Hovland MusiCap for tone
control, a Buzz Stop, and a custom
switch plate. Its pickups, which
were designed by Curtis Novak,
also can be found in Wronski’s
custom-built “Slackercaster,” an
assymetrical double-cut body with
a ’63 Jaguar neck.
His custom-painted late-’90s MIJ
Jaguar has Burns Tri-Sonic pickups.
“I used Seymour Duncan Jaguar
Antiquitys for the 2001 tour, then
the Tri-Sonics,” he said.
Wronski’s guitar collection isn’t
limited to Fenders. “I have a ’50s
single-cutaway Les Paul Junior with
the serial number sanded off,” he
said. “It belonged to the father of
a friend, and had been refinished
when he bought it. When it was
refinished again by one of his sons,
somehow all the parts were lost.
It’s my go-to guitar for anything
non-surf. I also have a ’56 Grestch
6182 that’s a wicked rhythm guitar
– great for Bo Diddley-type stuff
into a tweed Deluxe.”
His 1960 Martin 5-18 acoustic
can be heard on Slacktone’s two
studio CDs. “It blends perfectly
with a track that has drums, bass,
and electric guitar,” he said. “Larger
acoustic body shapes can cause
problems, with their inherent lowend boom.”
Recording with Slacktone
Wronski recorded the bulk of
Slacktone’s 1997 debut, Warning:
Reverb Instrumentals, with his ’58
Strat, which has been outfitted with
a Wilkinson bridge (although he
still owns the original). He used the
’57 Strat on “Goldfinger.”
“All my Strats have the James
Burton Telecaster switch wiring,”
he said. “It’s a five-way that gives
the neck and bridge pickup in
the middle position. If I want the
middle pickup, I pull up one of the
tone knobs.”
His guitar parts were recorded
through five amps to five tracks. He
used a ’54 Fender Princeton, a ’59
Fender Bassman, ’63 Fender Super
Reverb (with original-cone 1950s
Jensen P10R speakers), ’64 Fender
Super Reverb (with original-cone
1950 Jensen P10Q speakers) and a
’64 Vox AC30. He used five SM57
mics, two tube Echoplex units, and
three Fender Reverb units. “The five
separate tracks required me to be at
the board by myself for a couple of
hours in some cases to get the guitar
to sound right and lay in the track
the right way,” Wronski said.
He tracked most of Slacktone’s
second CD, 2000’s Into the Blue
Sparkle, with his Arctic White
Jaguar through six amps, recorded
to two tracks through two Coles
4038 ribbon mics. “It was recorded
using a lot of room sound, because
I wanted to have a bigger, more lush
sound for that record,” he said. “It
also made it easier to mix, having
already committed to the blend
and pans while tracking.” This
setup included a tweed ’60 Fender
Deluxe, the ’59 Fender Bassman,
’63 Fender Super Reverb, ’64 Fender
Super Reverb, a ’62 Fender Bassman
(with one JBL D-120F and one Jensen P12Q) and the ’64 AC30, plus
three tube Echoplex units and two
Fender Reverb units (’62 and ’65).
He used the ’58 Strat on “Daytona
Mona.”
More Vintage Voltage
Wronski’s collection also includes
two mint-condition ’63 Fender Reverb units with the original tubes
(“They’re the best I’ve ever heard,”
he said), an early-’50s Fender 600
amp, three ’67 Marshalls, two Vox
AC10s (’63 and ’64) and his heavily
modified “Slacktone” amp, which
started life as a ’72 Fender Super
Reverb.
Wronski has a saying he feels
sums up today’s through-the-roof
vintage-gear price tags: “I used to
have to pay you what you thought it
was worth. Now, I have to pay you
what I think it’s worth. But I guess
the good thing is that now you can
get exactly what you want if you’re
willing to pay.”
For more information about
Wronski and Slack tone, visit
slacktone.com.
“I got to play ‘The Star
Spangled Banner’ solo, surfguitar-style, with everybody standing up,” Wronski
said. “I was so happy I didn’t
hit a wrong note!”
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