No. 0901957·country·4 blocks
Folsom Prison Blues
Luther Perkins built the 'boom-chicka-boom' on the 1955 Sun recording of Folsom Prison Blues with an early-'50s Fender Esquire — a single bridge pickup, and famously dead volume and tone controls, so it ran wide open. He muted the bass strings with the heel of his picking hand and played simple doubled runs, bright and clean through a small combo, with Sam Phillips's Sun Studio tape slapback as the only effect. The technique is as much the tone as the gear: palm-damped bass strings, no frills.
With His Hot and Blue GuitarSignal path · input → output · 7 blocksLive values · Fractal Axe-Fx
Guitar
Fender Esquire (early 1950s)
Pickups
single
Tuning
bridge
Strings
standard
Studio Comp
Tweed Champ
1x8 Tweed Champ
Slapback Delay
Spring Reverb
Filter Tilt
Studio Comp
← Even out the muted runs
Threshold
-24dB
Ratio
2:1
Attack
8s
Release
140s
Mix
0.5
Level
0dB
Tweed Champ
← Silvertone 1300 (small clean combo)
Drive
2.5
Bass
4.5
Mid
5.5
Treble
7
Presence
6
MV
5.5
Cut
5
1x8 Tweed Champ
← Silvertone built-in speaker
LowCut100Hz
HighCut6500Hz
Level
0dB
Slapback Delay
← Sun Studio tape slapback
Time
130ms
Feedback
0
Mix
0.3
Spring Reverb
← Sun Studio room
Mix
0.1
Decay
0.6s
Predelay
0.0ms
Filter Tilt
← Tilt EQ (global brightness)
Tilt
0.6
CenterFreq
1000Hz
Level
0
Engineer's note
File 090
Luther Perkins built the 'boom-chicka-boom' on the 1955 Sun recording of Folsom Prison Blues with an early-'50s Fender Esquire — a single bridge pickup, and famously dead volume and tone controls, so it ran wide open. He muted the bass strings with the heel of his picking hand and played simple doubled runs, bright and clean through a small combo, with Sam Phillips's Sun Studio tape slapback as the only effect. The technique is as much the tone as the gear: palm-damped bass strings, no frills.
— Luther Perkins
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