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On this episode of The Lipstick Pickup Podcast, Emily gets a primer on the career of The String King, Dean Farley of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
More on Dean from https://pyramid-saiten.de/de/direct/
"Dean Farley began his journey with guitar strings during the summer of 1970 at age 16. Little did he know at the time that this period would radically change his life’s direction. Between the months of July and August, guitar strings in America were going through a major change in their basic sound. Previously, the strings Dean played were very rich in their tone and had a much more soulful sound! That was early July. However, by a week into August, things had changed drastically. This “new” (rather foreign) sound of the sets he bought a few hours before his weekly jam session were noticeably brighter in character, yet strangely, lacked the sweet midrange and full bass response from the sets he had bought only several weeks before. Simply put, Dean couldn’t get that wonderful original sound from his Telecaster/ Fender Super Reverb amplifier combination—despite even after fooling around with the amp’s various controls for far too long. This was a very frustrating and confusing dilemma.
At this point, Dean’s curiosity completely took over and he was hell-bent to find strings that sounded “right” to his critical ears. A few years down the timeline, he had several opportunities to learn about the incredible variety of metals used in the manufacturing of silicon wafers in the semiconductor industry. In Silicon Valley, Dean was lucky he had access to extremely high tech equipment which would benefit him as a string designer in the near future. It might be noted here that Dean Farley is the only individual in the string business who actually has a solid connection to the semiconductor industry in a very real sense; his father happened to be the one who, originally, came up with the now famous nickname of “Silicon Valley” long before it finally stuck as the formal name of the Santa Clara Valley, CA area around 1971.
As the early to mid 1980s came along, Dean finally got into the string business for himself. He recognized from the start that the only way that he could make any success with this was to think in very different terms. Indeed, he literally had to pretend like he had no competitors if he was going to create anything truly special.
By the mid 90s, Dean’s string adventures had led him into a side gig as a journalist and this resulted in him starting to write monthly columns about guitar string history and design in Vintage Guitar magazine. It was right here where Dean wrote about Pyramid Strings’ history and their association with The Beatles.
Eventually, in 2006, Dean met Pyramid‘s director, Max Junger, at a trade show in Los Angeles. The two of them had an immediate connection and the rest of this story has been currently manifesting into a wonderful relationship that will leave some deep marks on the musical world. It’s great to be here at Pyramid! This is an absolute honor and pleasure to design thoughtful and unique concepts in guitar string designs that should inspire every musician of any style or background."
28 Min.