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 · Neural DSP Quad Cortex
Guitar
Fender Esquire (early 1950s)
Pickups
single
Tuning
bridge
Strings
standard
LA Compressor
Tweed Deluxe
1x12 Tweed
Slapback Delay
Spring Reverb
Tilt EQ
LA Compressor
← Even out the muted runs
Threshold
-24dB
Ratio
2:1
Attack
8s
Release
140s
Mix
50
Level
0dB
Tweed Deluxe
← Silvertone 1300 (small clean combo)
Gain
2.5
Bass
4.5
Mid
5.5
Treble
7
Presence
6
Master
5.5
Sag
5.5
1x12 Tweed
← Silvertone built-in speaker
LowCut100Hz
HighCut6500Hz
Level
0dB
Slapback Delay
← Sun Studio tape slapback
Time
130ms
Feedback
0
Mix
32
Level
0
Spring Reverb
← Sun Studio room
Decay
0.6s
Predelay
16ms
Mix
10
Level
0
Tilt EQ
← Tilt EQ (global brightness)
Tilt
5.8
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
Sources · Verified by