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 · 5 blocksLive values · Kemper Profiler
Guitar
Fender Esquire (early 1950s)
Pickups
single
Tuning
bridge
Strings
standard
Compressor
Search Rig Exchange for 'Tweed Champ' or 'small clean combo'
Slapback Delay
Spring Reverb
Compressor
← Even out the muted runs
Intensity
2
Attack
0.1s
Volume
0
Search Rig Exchange for 'Tweed Champ' or 'small clean combo'
← Silvertone 1300 (small clean combo)
Gain
2.5
Bass
4.5
Middle
5.5
Treble
7
Presence
6
Slapback Delay
← Sun Studio tape slapback
Time
130ms
Feedback
0
Mix
0.3
Spring Reverb
← Sun Studio room
Decay
0.6s
Predelay
0.0ms
Mix
0.1
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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