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.
What we checked
Computed by a program, on this recipe, every time this page is built. How this works
Preset files — 0 of 3 complete
- Helix 1 block missing from the file
Which ones
Not in the file: 1x12 US Small Tweed. The recipe calls for this block, but we have no verified model ID for it on this platform, so the preset is written without it. Add it by hand using the settings above.
- Quad Cortex 5 blocks replaced with a stand-in model
Which ones
Replaced with a stand-in: LA Compressor, Tweed Deluxe, 1x12 Tweed, Slapback Delay, Tilt EQ. These load cleanly but are not the model named above — the file will sound wrong here until we map them. Set these blocks by hand.
- Katana 3 blocks replaced with a stand-in model
Which ones
Replaced with a stand-in: Clean, Delay, Reverb. These load cleanly but are not the model named above — the file will sound wrong here until we map them. Set these blocks by hand.
What we didn't check
- Nobody played this through a real amp. There is no human listening test behind any number on this page.
- The settings are reasoned from the sources below, not measured off the record.
- No audio has been rendered for this recipe yet, so you cannot hear it before you load it.
- 3 platforms on this page (TONEX, Kemper, Fractal) get a model pointer, not a preset file — nothing was built or checked for them.