Marvin, Hank

The King of Twang talks finding his signature tone

As The Shadows’ King Of Twang, Hank Marvin was Britain’s first guitar hero of the electric era, inspiring a generation of players with single-coil tones as springy and lush as a manicured lawn. Speaking to Guitarist in 2017, Hank said: “My reference points were the human voice, various jazz sax ballads with a strong melodic content and guitarists like Les Paul. The human voice and saxes usually had a vibrato that I emulated on the Strat, helping the notes to be more expressive. My sound and style more or less happened by accident; the combination of the Strat, the AC15 amp, which soon became the AC30, and the echo box sort of pushed me in a direction, and who was

I to argue?”