I noticed that, at my last job, the Germans in the office seemed to have two ways of pronouncing the "ch" - in many instances (for example, in "ich" ) it was closer to a "sh" sound than to the hard "ch" sound...is that dialectical and if so, from which region? Sorry, I just remembered that when you mentioned the "s" issue.
Standard German has two allophones of /x/, if that was what you were referring to? Palatal fricative after front vowels (for example in <ich>, velar fricative after back vowels (for example in <ach>.
Some dialects do have the front allophone further forward than palatal though; I have a great-grandmother who has a dorsal postalveolar fricative in <ich>, but I'm not sure where she is from.....(It might also be because of age..I never used to pay any attention to it)
~netweaver~