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 · 4 blocksLive values · Boss Katana
Guitar
Fender Esquire (early 1950s)
Pickups
single
Tuning
bridge
Strings
standard
Clean
Delay
Reverb
Clean
← Silvertone 1300 (small clean combo)
Gain
25
Volume
60
Bass
45
Middle
55
Treble
70
Presence
60
Master
60
Delay
← Sun Studio tape slapback
Time
130ms
Feedback
0
EffectLevel
32
Reverb
← Sun Studio room
Time
6ms
PreDelay
14ms
Tone
55
EffectLevel
10
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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