No. 0561974·southern-rock·4 blocks
Sweet Home Alabama
Sweet Home Alabama's instantly-recognizable intro lick — and the spoken 'one, two, three' count-off — was played by Ed King, not Gary Rossington, on a Fender Stratocaster with notably weak single-coils. Tracked at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia (1974), it ran into a cranked amp captured by a single padded Neumann U87 placed close to the cabinet, with no pedals — just a touch of reverb. The cleanness is the secret: King turned the amp all the way up for sustain, but the feeble pickups couldn't push it into breakup, so the lick stays glassy even at full volume.
Second HelpingSignal path · input → output · 7 blocksLive values · Line 6 Helix
Guitar
Fender Stratocaster (1972, per Ed King)
Pickups
SSS
Tuning
neck/middle (positions 4-5, inferred from the warm tone — King did not document the selector position)
Strings
standard
Vol/Pan
Deluxe Comp
Scream 808
Brit Plexi Brt
4x12 Greenback 25
Plate
Vol/Pan
← Volume control
Pedal
100%
Deluxe Comp
← Natural amp + studio compression
Threshold
-30dB
Ratio
2:1
Knee
6dB
Attack
60s
Release
500s
Mix
50
Level
0dB
Scream 808
← No pedal on the original (alt boost)
Drive
1.5
Gain
1.5
Tone
5
Level
7
Brit Plexi Brt
← Cranked 50W Marshall (per King) / Fender Twin (per engineer)
Drive
5.5
Bass
5
Mid
6
Treble
6.5
Presence
5.5
ChVol
7
Master
10
Bias
5
BiasX
5
Sag
5.5
Hum
5
Ripple
5
4x12 Greenback 25
← Cranked amp's cab, close-mic'd
LowCut90Hz
HighCut9000Hz
Resonance
0.4
Level
0dB
Pan
0.5
Delay
0
Plate
← A touch of short studio reverb
LowCut200Hz
HighCut8000Hz
Mix
14
Decay
0.6s
Predelay
20ms
Level
0
Engineer's note
File 056
Sweet Home Alabama's instantly-recognizable intro lick — and the spoken 'one, two, three' count-off — was played by Ed King, not Gary Rossington, on a Fender Stratocaster with notably weak single-coils. Tracked at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia (1974), it ran into a cranked amp captured by a single padded Neumann U87 placed close to the cabinet, with no pedals — just a touch of reverb. The cleanness is the secret: King turned the amp all the way up for sustain, but the feeble pickups couldn't push it into breakup, so the lick stays glassy even at full volume.
— Ed King
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