The Lipstick Pickup Podcast with Emily Vardaman Walters

PYRAMID SCHEMES WITH THE KING OF STRINGS, DEAN FARLEY | The Lipstick Pickup Ep. 17 #guitarstrings

• Emily Vardaman Walters • Season 1 • Episode 17

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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."



UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, is this the String King of Cape Cod, Massachusetts?

SPEAKER_00:

You have reached the U.S. lab for research and development on Cape Cod. Yes, you have.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. This is Dean Farley. Dean of Strings, Farley. How are you doing, Emily? I'm wonderful. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm really good, even though it's rainy. I

SPEAKER_01:

hate to report that it's very sunny here in Nashville, so I'll try to be extra sunny for you today.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh great, that's always a good thing.

SPEAKER_01:

This is Emily Vardaman Walters with the Lipstick Pickup in Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm calling my new friend, Dean Farley, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to introduce him to my listeners. I've met him a few weeks ago, thanks to a mutual acquaintance, Stu Snyder of Tokyo, Japan. Stu and I recorded the last podcast I published I recorded with Stu Snyder, and it's been a popular one. I got a bunch of downloads from Japan. And I also got an introduction to Dean Farley. He goes way back with Stu Snyder. Anyway, it's a small, big world. And Dean and I have become acquainted, and he has been giving me a crash course on string history, relevancy, tone, the business, just about everything.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much, Alan. Emily, I'm honored to be here with you today.

SPEAKER_01:

I got some questions for you, Mr. Farley.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm ready, as I'll ever be.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, tell my listeners that it didn't take long to find a lot of things on Dean on the Internet. I just put in Dean Farley, Pyramid Strings. I found an interesting bio of Mr. Farley on the Pyramid Strings website and YouTube videos online. and all kinds of things out there, talking about Dean and his strings. And they're out. I'm glad that I get to talk to him in person and ask him some of these questions. You ready for me, Dean? I'm

SPEAKER_00:

ready for you, Emily.

SPEAKER_01:

Dean of Strings Farley. I want to know how you started in the string business. I asked you when we first met, and I find it fascinating, and now I want you to tell my listeners.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, imagine you're 16 years old and you're really first getting into guitar. And by the way, just so you know, just for subject's sake, the very first guitar I ever played was a Dano. So, here I am and I'm 16 and I'm jamming with my friends. It's 1970, it's sort of the end of July. And, you know, everything was great. We were sounding great. And a couple of weeks later, when we got back together, I had to restring my guitar. And all of a sudden, this is August, right, early August. And then all of a sudden, I heard something that was vastly wrong. All of a sudden, the warp of the guitar went away. And I sat there for an hour or two twiddling dials to try to get my sound back, unquote. But it didn't come back. And I go back to the music store to complain about the strings. So I started thinking, damn, maybe I have to make my own strings again. So that's how it all started. You know, they changed the formula. I didn't like the formula because all the frequency response was totally upside down and hyped in different regions like the treble. I wanted something nice and warm and fat. And instead I got thinness, really thin stuff. So that began my thought about, you know, what you do about this.

SPEAKER_01:

That's an amazing answer. You taught me a word. You taught me a lot of things, Dean Farley. Oh,

SPEAKER_00:

gee, thanks, Emily.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's funny that your name is Dean, you know, because, you know, Dean of this, Dean of that, Dean of strings.

SPEAKER_00:

It's actually the string king, but that's

SPEAKER_01:

okay. Yeah, we're going to talk about the history of the string king, too. I hope. I hope. It's in there. Okay, you taught me a word, metallurgy. Metallurgy. Did I say it right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, you did.

SPEAKER_01:

Tell me what metallurgy is and what was your disposition toward this and why you were sort of drawn to making strings?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, to make strings, the first thing you have to do is learn your metals. That's the first thing. So I learned it in several places. first of all i you know how sometimes you have temporary jobs you know and you have you work through a temp agency i got a job working in a printed circuit board shop no and it's a nasty place to work because it has every chemical you can imagine

SPEAKER_01:

where what physical location did you work at that

SPEAKER_00:

This was in Mountain View, California, which is the northern part of Silicon Valley, California, otherwise known as San Jose, Sunnyvale, Cupertino.

SPEAKER_01:

Silicon Valley?

SPEAKER_00:

So I started out with the PC boards, which was kind of like a rude awakening because all those chemicals I had to work around. But in doing so, I saw what they were doing with metals in the production of printed circuit boards. And thank goodness I only stayed there for three months because that would have been dead if I would have stayed there longer because of the chemicals. So further on down the line, I got a job at AMD, Advanced Micro Devices. All you people listening, probably you're listening to the chips inside of your computer. That's where I worked. And I was a QC, Quality Control Engineer. And so I would final inspect the these silicon wafers, which had all these semiconductors on a wafer. And I had access to amazing equipment that people wouldn't usually come across. It would give me access to seeing things at much closer angles than anybody could. So one night, early on the job, I started seeing things through the eyepiece of the microscope. And I'll just say it. It was an electron microscope, just for the record. So this is a big key in what I learned. So essentially, I started seeing things. So I started asking the higher engineers, hey, what am I seeing here? So I befriended a couple of them, and they told me what metal I was seeing. looking at and all that stuff so I started cataloging all this stuff and I started looking at the behavior of metals and I said wait a minute if I could use some of this stuff that I'm seeing through the eyepiece of an electron microscope and I could control the behavior of the metal that might come in handy in the vibratory sense with making strengths so that's where that happened that's where I learned about metals Wow. Advanced micro devices where in a semiconductor wafer, there's probably every metal known to mankind in there somewhere.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I really find this fascinating. I know who advanced micro devices are and microchip technologies and just how synonymous this kind of enterprise is to Silicon Valley. That's why they call it Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah. And not to mention that, but my dad was the one that came up with the name of the Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_02:

What?

SPEAKER_00:

So like it or not, you're talking to Silicon Valley, like it or love it. You know, it's like I have to live with it, even though I hate the fact that that might be true.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. What year would this have been that you were doing this? I'm sorry if you told me before. AMD.

SPEAKER_00:

AMD was 77, 78.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, that would have been in the early days.

SPEAKER_00:

It would have been my march toward strings, but I have to say that I had worked for string companies as a salesman previous to this. So this is why I wanted to make my own strings, because I saw I wanted to do my own

SPEAKER_01:

thing. When you got your job with A&D... Sorry to go down a rabbit hole, but what were the criterias of that job? Was it just a simple basic manufacturing job?

SPEAKER_00:

It was manufacturing, yeah. I worked in a clean room.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I learned my stripes about, you know, getting hydrofluoric acid on my finger and having to go to a clinic in the middle of the night to get the stuff in there to, you know, stop the acid from eating your whole hand off. So I got my, I earned my stripes, stripes empty in the fab room. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Um, that's pretty wild and crazy and I love it. Um, okay. I, I, one, another one of my questions was when did you start making your own strings? But you answered that. You just answered that question. Um, No,

SPEAKER_00:

I was working for other string manufacturers before AMD.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's right, that's right. Okay, then, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And then all of a sudden I decided at some point in the early to mid-80s to do my own thing. So I had a different idea of what I wanted. for what I did, because I was generally a jazz guitar player. I played big guitars like Gibson Super 400s. I also liked the jazz rock fusion stuff. And this is where the impetus comes in. What was my own thing?

SPEAKER_02:

My

SPEAKER_00:

own thing was listening to guys that were playing a lot of notes, But, you know, I wanted to get better definition when somebody was doing really fast runs. So I had to come up with a string that you could hear every note clearly, regardless of how fast they were playing it. You had to hear everything as clear as a bell. And that's what my goal was. I wanted to design the string that would work for fusion. So that's where I started. And I got the string. I developed the string that did exactly that.

SPEAKER_01:

That's so cool. I want to tell you that this weekend, one of the most knowledgeable people in my Lipstick Pickup Intelligence Network is what I call these. That's

SPEAKER_00:

a great name for it.

SPEAKER_01:

Sometimes I call them my investment advisors because the handful of instruments that I've bought... I bought with the... endorsement or advice from people if you look over my shoulder is a green jerry jones baby sitar and i bought this because the opportunity was presented to me by a guy in our community named chris van allen he is an audio engineer from philly and he's the one who bird dogged this for me he's hoping to move to nashville and we hit a couple of guitar shops and i got to hang out with him and he's very knowledgeable and i told him about meeting you and that it was you and Stuart and that it was sort of opening my eyes to the relevancy of strings and he said yeah people are starting to talk about have gone so people are getting so curious about the vintage instrument that they're really now wanting to think about hey what strings were on that guitar you know and he thought this would be a really great chat so that was just a way to say somebody told me that this this idea that the strings really matter and that there's an interesting history there was confirmed by a 27 year old audio engineer from Philadelphia. Is

SPEAKER_02:

that nice?

SPEAKER_01:

I hope he enjoys this, but shout out to my, I digress, but that's why I call him my investment advisor. This is a, this sitar over my shoulder is a, you know, at least$1,200 instrument. And he helped me get it for 600 bucks. Shout

SPEAKER_00:

out. That's really cool. I've been watching that guitar actually.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, shout out to, sitar too yeah well this is the baby sitar it looks like a guitar but it's got a i'll reach back can you hear this dean Do you hear

SPEAKER_00:

my string? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It's the buzz bridge. When you see the video, you'll be able to see this. And it looks like a little funky psychedelic guitar or, you know, like that teardrop shape, but it has a buzz bridge. Chris already had one, so when he saw a fabulous deal on one, he sent it to me and I bought it. That's

SPEAKER_00:

really sweet of him.

SPEAKER_01:

A shout out to my homie Chris Van Allen and his investment advice. I asked him if he knew who Pyramid Strings were. Obviously, I'm just learning. And he said, oh, those are jazz. His perception was that they were high-end jazz strings. But it's not quite that simple, is it?

SPEAKER_00:

First of all, it has to be said that Pyramid was the original sound of the Beatles. And they're 175 years old, too, so that's a little bit less... in the business than, say, Martin Guitars. They were 1833, okay? Both German, ironically, but Pyramid started in Czechoslovakia, but that's another story. So essentially, Pyramid strings, you know, they're really well known for their flat wound gold strings, and they're very good strings, and they have a really punchy sound for flat wounds. They're very nice. They're high quality strings. I mean, they've been around for a long time and you know it takes a long time for people to get good at making strings and you know to give you a little bit of history on Pyramid all the craftsmen in the shop are women every single winder in there is a woman Max Younger the owner director is the only guy in the factory so the Beatles is what You know, Pyramid was not sold in America from the period of 1970 to about the time the Beatles anthology came out, which was about 1994. And that's when pyramids were reintroduced into the American market.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I didn't, of course, I didn't know that, and why would I? But I find that fascinating. Every time a compilation comes out, it's a reboot, culturally. I was born in 67, and so I wasn't exactly a Beatles contemporary, even though I was a small child, so I didn't listen to them. I discovered them when the blue and the red compilations came out, like a lot of Gen Xers, and that anthology was probably another opportunity for young people and some people, you know, to be reintroduced to the Beatles. Were they trying to capitalize on that?

SPEAKER_00:

I think they were doing that because it was around the anthology. But what happened was, is I... was writing for a magazine at the time, Vintage Guitar. And I happened to be the errand boy, in a manner of speaking, to tell the world that Pyramid was coming back to America. So what happened in the interim between, let's say, 94 and 2006, when I met Max Junger at a NAMM show, the first thing he did when he saw my name on my name tag, he He says, I've been waiting 11 years to meet you. Or

SPEAKER_01:

he

SPEAKER_00:

even said hi.

SPEAKER_01:

The string

SPEAKER_00:

came. And I was like shocked because, I mean, he's been waiting 11 years for me? What? So what he told me is I was his inspiration to make his own line of vintage strings.

UNKNOWN:

Oh.

SPEAKER_00:

So he took everything I wrote for vintage guitar and it gave him some ideas to do. And I'm very glad he did it because as it turns out, now I work for him. So now the two of us are together and we're like two peas in a pod. We're like bohemian brothers.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. So... You've answered some of my questions, and I'm fascinated by this history of collaboration. Will you explain to me what makes your strings different from your competitors? Well... I mean, I know there's a bunch of different types of strings. And so you have your place in the market. You have your direct competitors because there's a bunch of different types. And we're not naming names or anything like that. Nat Daniel used to call his competitors Brand X, whoever it was. He would just say Brand

SPEAKER_00:

X. It doesn't matter here because all that really matters is I was using different material than other string makers.

SPEAKER_02:

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00:

When I decided to I always make them for me. Okay? They had to satisfy me. And I was very surprised and knocked out when I found out that everybody liked what I liked. That was kind of like a major aha moment. But I always used different metals because the reason why I wanted to make my own strings is I didn't like the way the other strings felt. And I wanted to also improve that factor. So I had to go to other metals that were softer, but they sounded different too. So it performed differently. So essentially, I use different metals. And then all of a sudden, at some point in 1989, I came up with the idea of making a vintage style string, which I did. And they were a massive success. And that's where everybody started copying me. So here we are. And, you know, I just came up of a different marketing angle. Like Stu said, unbeknownst to me, he created a market for vintage instruments. And the strings, the pure nickel strings were always probably dedicated toward vintage instruments. But we found out that they have a dual purpose in the manner of it would make a new guitar sound more vintage.

SPEAKER_02:

So

SPEAKER_00:

the flip side was true. So, I mean, they were a walkaway hit, and everybody copied me from that point on, but they could never figure out how I did it because they never sounded like my strings. But there's a lot of reasons for that, and I think AMD has a lot to do with it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, understanding the finesse. of the metals. They're not all equal.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no. And then you

SPEAKER_01:

have different alloys. Do you work with things that are alloy? Is a guitar string ever a mix of metals?

SPEAKER_00:

Always.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so tell me one recipe of yours, okay, for a guitar string that people would understand.

SPEAKER_00:

Phosphor bronze. Okay. You know, that's 90-10. There's 90-10 or 92-8, and it's, you know, one metal is the preponderance, the big number, and then there's another metal that's the smaller amount. And that's what makes– phosphor bronze is a well-known and well-used formula.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

for acoustic strings. And then there's other things like, you know, the old strings I got away from are called nickel-plated steel. That is an 8% anodized flash over a carbon steel or, you know, as the outer wrap, and then that's over a Swedish steel core. So that's coated with the anodizing of 8% nickel flash. It's not pure nickel, it's just a nickel flash, and of course the outer wrap they flash it with is a lot brighter, so that's why it sounds different than pure nickel outer wrap. Pure nickel's much warmer.

SPEAKER_01:

It... Sounds so, to quote the expression, inside baseball, but it's really not because since I've been, you know, talked to Stu and then talked to you, I'm like, well, the string is the most elemental thing. That's like the first thing you touch. Absolutely. I cook. And so I understand equipment, gear, equipment. analogies, right? And that you want a pan like this, you want a knife made of that. And there's reasons, there's very specific reasons. And this is all coming together for

SPEAKER_00:

me. Very much so. Yes. That's a good analogy, Emily. I like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Gear talk, you know, I've always been, you know, I've always used that analogy, gear talk with cooking stuff. Okay, here's a question. Who were your mentors? Okay, I know you've talked a little bit about where you started, but who were your mentors?

SPEAKER_00:

Interestingly enough, this happened between the period of AMD and me starting my own string company. I was the sales manager for Groove Tubes out in California. And I met two people on my very first day of work. One was Ken Fisher. which Stu brought up to you. The other guy was down by Disneyland. His name was Jim Kelly. And he was involved with people like Robin Ford and Vince Gill is a big fan of his aunt, Jim Kelly. And so I had to deliver tubes to Jim one day. I was asked, hey, Dave, do you mind driving down to Orange County? You know, Jim needs these tubes. I've never heard of this guy, right? So I go down there and I walk in his shop and he has this beautiful amp. And he said, hey, you live in North Hollywood, don't you? I said, oh, you've been talking to the boss, huh? So he said, can you take this amp up to this rehearsal space in North Hollywood, which happened to be Jackson Brown's place? So I took this amp and I was supposed to deliver it to Bonnie Raitt. So essentially, I met my two mentors. Jim Kelly taught me how to hear things over a telephone line. For example, I bought his amp in 1983 and I played it for 18 years. One of the best amps ever. And actually, it was my main So basically, Jim taught me how to hear things over a landline because he could do it and Ken could do it too. So I got like this massive education on how to listen in really critical, critically hard places to troubleshoot things. And it took years to do that. But, I mean, sometimes you have to not pay attention to, you know, things at the phone limit, like frequency response. There's a way of listening around things to hear the core of the problem. And that's what these guys taught me. Not only that, but that all somehow dovetailed into how I listened in general. I mean, like I've come to the conclusion that I listened with more than my ears. I think I listened with my whole body, in fact.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you listen? What is your preferred way to listen to music? If I wanted to send you a song, and let's say I was a musician, and I wanted to send you a rough mix, I wanted to see what you think about it, how would you like to listen to it?

SPEAKER_00:

Through good speakers.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Through maybe a tube stereo. You know, I really like tube stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

But,

SPEAKER_00:

you know, solid state's good, too. It just depends on what you're wanting to do. I use very, very sophisticated gear to listen with, and I have very sophisticated amplifiers. Most of them are Swedish, actually. It's kind of funny, and some are from Mississippi, but we'll get into that later. I

SPEAKER_01:

hope so. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

we always start in Mississippi and go up. That's just the way it works. If it doesn't pass Mississippi, it won't work.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, have you ever heard the PB called the Mississippi Marshall? Yeah, I have. I had never heard that until a couple weeks ago. I went to Blues Vintage Guitars of Nashville, Tennessee, and I don't know how I had never heard the Mississippi. Mississippi Marshall, PB.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, you know, you're the one that said dreams die, but PBs don't.

SPEAKER_01:

I told you that I like to give credit where credit is due, and I stole that one from one of my community members. On Instagram, his handle is dreams die, but PBs don't. Shout out to dreams die, but PBs don't. The best handle. Hey,

SPEAKER_00:

don't. Shout out.

SPEAKER_01:

The best handle on Instagram besides mine, the lipstick pickup.

SPEAKER_00:

I've had my PV app for 30 years and, you know, it's still working. I haven't even done a recap on it. It still sounds great.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, this is a great time to tell the listener that this is the first time Dean and I are going to record. I've asked him if he'll talk to me about Hartley PV in a separate conversation. So if you think this is fun and you're enjoying his knowledge and storytelling, you're going to have to come back because we're going to record an episode about Hartley Peavy.

SPEAKER_00:

That'd be fun.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, next

SPEAKER_00:

question. I have a lot of stories.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I can't wait to hear them because I've never met him, but I feel I've read enough about him. I feel like I know that kind of pioneer and I can't wait to hear about a Mississippi pioneer.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. He's a real character.

SPEAKER_01:

So I've heard. Okay, next question. How did you get these gigs at Vintage Guitar and Premier Guitar? Did you tell me yet?

SPEAKER_00:

So two magazines things I wrote for were kind of separated by topic. The reason why I got known for strings is because I had a column in vintage guitar, the first one. The column went from 94 to 96. Actually, it was the end of 93 to 96. It was a little bit over two years. It was called The Evolution and History of Guitar Making and Design. That was the title of the column. And so I was teaching people about how to find their sound. So I explained how strings were made, what they were made with, all that stuff. And that kind of was distributed all over the world, and that's where I got the nickname The String King from Ken Fisher, because he had to call him in the magazine, and he got me the gig at Finish Guitar. So if we go up the timeline a little bit... I had a column in Tremere Guitar called Signal Chain, and I was talking about gear and how to put things together to make your sounds. So that was a very different column.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

But I have different interests, and all four of them dovetail into making strings better.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

A teaser for another future episode. I want to learn more about Ken Fisher from you, too, because I didn't know anything about his amps until we talked. And then I went and looked up how coveted they are. And, of course, now I want to know about Ken Fisher. So we're going to talk about that, not today, but on a later episode. I have pre-committed Dean Farley to come back and lecture us on Ken Fisher.

SPEAKER_00:

Because

SPEAKER_01:

the amps are just really beloved, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00:

You crack me up, Emily. Thank

SPEAKER_01:

you. You crack me up, too. You're hilarious. Okay, let me get to my next question. Okay, what are some of the things that you've done that other people haven't thought about doing?

SPEAKER_00:

Are you talking about my approaches or little ideas that I come up that people wouldn't do? Sure,

SPEAKER_01:

both. Under the umbrella of how are you doing things differently with Pyramid Strings, what is it you're offering? It's been explained to me that your cost is more than some of your competitors, but I've got to tell you that as a music listener, I can't imagine splitting hairs over the cost of the strings.

SPEAKER_00:

particularly if they last almost forever the new string we came out with I had on one guitar for almost two and a half years before I took them off

SPEAKER_01:

yeah

SPEAKER_00:

So longevity is really important to me, but as far as that's concerned, that string for pyramid is called the New Rock Standard, hence the name. It's a brand new metal that I cooked up. It came out of the blue, and I called my extrusion company in the Midwest, and I said, hey, can you make me up a formula? They said, what? And I picked, you know, how we were talking about the proportions earlier. I'm talking with the rep there and she goes so team how do you want to configure this and I'd go oh let's try this percentage of this metal and let's try this percentage just for fun and see if it works so they made it up send it to Germany I get samples they come here and all of a sudden I knew I hit paper when I heard them and I felt them and They're the most impervious strings I've ever made as far as longevity. I mean, they're just ridiculously... What's the word? Hard to kill.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Sounds like a Steven Seagal movie or

SPEAKER_01:

something. When I Googled Dean Farley and Pyramid Strings to find, you know, what was readily available on you, I heard someone call you a mad scientist.

SPEAKER_00:

Well... I don't know how to respond to that. I mean, I'm very flattered. I mean, I have to tell you, I love what I do. Let's just be honest. I mean, I'm very passionate about what I do. I don't think I'm OCD. I think I'm just passionate. And I think I was born to do this. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have been doing it for 40 years. I mean, this road wasn't easy at times.

SPEAKER_01:

What, it's not a cakewalk in the string business?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, no. No, particularly in America. In Europe, it's easier. I mean, you know, I kind of did a Jimi Hendrix maneuver. You know what that one is, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I get it. You break in England.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's kind of like Jimmy went from New York to the UK, blew everybody's mind. Then where did he come back to make it in his own country, Monterey? Monterey Pop. That's a great analogy. I had to go to Europe to get my name on some pyramid strings and design for Max in Bavaria. I was like Jimi Hendrix coming back to America. And when people saw these new strings coming from Bavaria with my name on it, And it says on the package, the real 21st century strings. I couldn't figure out why any other company couldn't figure out what time it was or what century it was. So I took it and ran with it. So that's what happened. When I went to Pyramid, all of a sudden, everything's worldwide. So now these strings are being sold all over the world and not just in this country or a couple countries, you know? Yeah. Now everybody can enjoy them, you know, because my thing's about making people happy with their sound. That's the reason why I do this.

SPEAKER_01:

My job is the string king.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, that was a heavy, heavy thing to put on me. That was a heavy burden.

SPEAKER_01:

A heavy crown to wear.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, you know, when I was off not making strings, all I'd get is people going, hey, Dean, when are you going to start making strings again, you know? So now it's great with Pyramid because I've been there, God, five years now.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. I had eight questions and you kind of nailed every one of them about your, that I came to coalesce after we had talked to introduce you to my listeners and why I care what you think.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

The string king. We're going to call things string king approved. It's a teaser for future episodes. One thing I love about meeting Dean is that he's been in the guitar world, big picture, for decades, and he knows a ton of people that are really fascinating, and I'm going to ask him about them, from Ken Fisher to Hartley Peavy. We're going to talk about the East Coast and the West Coast. You've got an international international experience, and we're going to talk some more. We're going to have you back.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. This is going to

SPEAKER_01:

be a regular column.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, well, hey, I don't mind. Is it okay if I give a couple of shout-outs to a couple of my Nashville people?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, shout it out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Vinnie Smith from V-Pix. He's important. I made a pic for him. It's called The Farley.

UNKNOWN:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's V-Pix. And Bucky Barrett, I want to say hi to. I haven't seen Bucky in a while. Great guitar player. One of the scariest guitar players I've ever known in my entire life. I like that word, scary. I have a really great story about him. Many stories, in fact. And then Tommy Hatcher, who's a friend of... of ours from something that we did that we'll get into next time. Yes. You know, the wine tasting event we talked about sort of, you know, except it's a nap tasting event. So Tommy Hatcher, I want to say hi to you, Tommy. So hi to my Nashville buddies.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, y'all in Nashville from Dean Farley of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, we're going to say goodbye for now. Say goodbye to my listeners.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much, everybody. It's been a real pleasure being here. Thanks to you, Emily. You're really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. I can't thank you enough for picking up the phone and talking to me about the importance of strings.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I had a ball. I had a blast.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. Say goodbye.

SPEAKER_00:

Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_01:

If you hear excellent tone and the sound of birds chirping, it means you've made it through an entire episode of the Lipstick Pickup Podcast. You're as free as a bird now, but I hope you'll join me again soon. Comments or questions? I can be reached at emilyatthelipstickpickup.com.