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 · 4 blocksLive values · Kemper Profiler
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
Compressor
Search Rig Exchange for 'Marshall Plexi clean' or 'Fender Twin'
Plate Reverb
Compressor
← Natural amp + studio compression
Sustain
3
Tone
5
Volume
5
Search Rig Exchange for 'Marshall Plexi clean' or 'Fender Twin'
← Cranked 50W Marshall / Fender Twin
Gain
4
Bass
5
Middle
6
Treble
6.5
Presence
5.5
Plate Reverb
← A touch of short studio reverb
Decay
0.6s
Predelay
20ms
Mix
0.1
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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