The Downtown Sound — New York Guitar 1986: Part I, The Solo Artists/Composers

LINK WRAY — whose 1958 hit 'Rumble' sounded an early tremor of what was to become rock and roll guitar — once divulged his jerry-rigged approach to sonic innovation: "I started searchin' for music sounds, you know, because I played jazz, and I got bored with all them sophisticated hot licks and chords," he told interviewer Gene Santoro in 1985 [from Recombinant Do-Re-Mi by Billy Bergman and Richard Horn; Quarto Press]. "So I was lookin' for sounds before there was any boxes. I made my own wah-wah pedal from a pipe attached to an outdoor driver — you know, a horn. I took a hose from that to my mouth, and it came through the amplifier — wuh-wuh-wuh, like that. And fuzz: I stuck pencils in my amplifier. The tweeters, I used to stick holes in them. And I used to use two amplifiers against each other to get the compressed sounds."