@@tareum420 Wouldn't put it past him. He was, and still is, a right C U Next Tuesday. A Sea-Hunt. You get the idea. Algorithms are watching...can't call him a ****
I just can't forgive him for never recanting his infamous "Keep Britain white!" outburst. And treating his mates like crap. And abusing young women. And so on. If his music was revolutionary, like Picasso's art (another real piece of work), then I could probably let it go. But it wasn't. He nicked it from the people he wanted to kick out of Britain. Made millions off of their music. What a...yeah. I like that dog. Okay enough ranting.
I was a huge fan of Cream. I was 14 when they formed. I was really bummed when they broke up, and Clapton never played with such fire again. Cream was like a shooting star that shown brightly and then burned out. In my opinion Crossroads live from Wheels of Fire is the finest live recording ever made.
It's my absolute favorite Eric Clapton era. The best tones and some of the coolest and catchiest riffs of his career. I mean Iommi even cited Cream era Clapton and the woman tone as the influence for his own tone.
@@melonah perfect. Now if I just had a tube amp, or one that broke up when cranked, I'd be set. Oh and also, could play like Clapton... or Rhett, or even half as well lol
My first Clapton "Woman Tone" experience was Cream's "Disraeli Gears" at age seven. My big sister was playing "Strange Brew" on her record player, very loud and I thought it was really cool.
Can't fit that into a RU-vid video unless you're talking one specific tone from one specific guitar part, and even then it would be long video lol. Also to do it legit with the authentic equipment would be very cost prohibitive. Gilmours tones are the most expensive to chase imo, he used every bit of tech available to it's limits. But yeah, Big Muff, chorus from a CE2 or Small Stone, delay and reverb, and of course a strat. Also he used Hiwatts, so big clean amps with a lot of headroom help.
Clapton has went through several sounds and they’re all great. The woman tone is truly iconic but for me his sound with John Mayhall was just amazing. That Les Paul through a jtm45/Bluesbreaker is the quintessential blues-rock tone. Although I saw Clapton playing a Strat through a Fender Super Sonic 100w combo not too long ago and he still got really a great tone out of it, no matter what he’s using he always sounds amazing.
Many famous guitarists have said that too often people think its about gear rather than the player . Tony Iommi said he was very keen to try out another lefty's gear out of curiosity but "....i still sounded like me ."
man that bluesbreaker album is the one of only a few albums i can listen to front to end without skipping and loving every secind every note of it!! it is musical nirvana
I think EC doesn't get the credit he deserves. He is not a flashy player but his licks are tasteful and right for the songs and he's wrote amazing songs. If you listen to the Layla album and don't get chills then I don't know what's wrong with you. Eric and his tone in the 70's (my favorite era of his music) is the only reason I own two stratocasters. His work also made me dig deeper into the blues and actually made me want to learn how to play solos and leads when all i knew was how to play rhythm. I wouldn't be who I am as a player without his music.
He was def a flashy player for the generation… crossroads live recording was the flashiest guitar out there for the time… Eddie van Halen wasn’t doing his thing for almost another decade later
Bro was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thrice, how much more credit does he deserve dammit... just because you weren't around when he was 'viral' doesn't mean he never was lol
Carlos Santana described Eric Johnson's 1980s tone as the "woman tone." Johnson played mostly standard Stratocasters with single coil pickups. But most of that tone was in Johnson's hands, volume and treble cut control, and complex pedal board and amps for three distinctly different tones.
@@theparalexview785 ironically, most of ej’s most famous songs were recorded on his 335 or even an sg if I recall(in particular cliffs of Dover), but he plays them live on a strat with almost no difference in tone
Clapton was famous for blowing speakers in cream. A huge part of the "woman tone" is definitely greenback speakers collapsing under the strain of excessive volume. In the second half of cream, especially the live stuff, his tone becomes sharper more focused and you hear less of the woman tone... this almost exactly coincides with the advent of the heavy magnet greenback. As a result the speakers aren't as close to breaking point. From my own research clapton did not generally jumper the marshall channels plugging into the high input of the normal channel. But he did sometimes jumper 2 100W together in series!.... I think this can be heard on the Grande Ballroom concert were the tone is particularly distorted. It's a great sound, and one of the few where you know the player in just a couple of notes. Great video Rhett, your production quality is always outstanding.
Hi Rhett, I have also been obsessed with this for as long as I can remember. I think the critical piece is the speakers. The speakers shipped with the original JTMs were underpowered, meaning they would distort early without turning the amp all the way up. That is where part of it comes from. You can't properly replicate it with an amp sim, but I do understand that most of us don't have spaces we can crank up giant amps/
So nice to hear someone give well-deserved props to Clapton. He influenced me a lot. One of my most cherished moments was seeing him 9th row center, behind Bernie T cuz Elton was there too, at Dodger Stadium. Epico!
"I remember being two years old, three years old, and hearing those (Eric Clapton Unplugged) sounds..." ...And I remember sitting here feeling really, really, old. ...damn kids...(grumble grumble)
I got the Live Cream album at age 12 and it inspired me to learn how to play guitar, particularly blues guitar . . . I was already playing drums and Ginger Baker became a huge inspiration. Two close friends became pro bass players after listening to that same album and hearing Jack Bruce. What a band!
One of my earliest musical memories was my Dad putting on Politician - it scared the shit out of me so much I made him turn it off. I was only two or three, but I just had this vision of a disembodied head floating over rows of hedges in the dark, singing this song. I am now in my mid-30's and it is one of my favourite songs of all time
Thanks for making this video. I feel like Clapton gets a lot of shit nowadays for changing up his sound in the 70's. What I think it really shows is his innate ability to do what he did with a Les Paul / Marshall combination but with a Strat / Fender Amp combo. Goes to show that it's not about the equipment but the player and their "touch".
The “RIP WAH” graphic killed me. Loved this video. I’ve been dialing in my “Sunshine of Your Love” tone over the past week or so since I picked up my Benson Preamp pedal (it’s phenomenal), but this video gives me a good reason to finally dive into the rest of Cream’s discography. He we go.
I was around at the time of Disraeli Gears and I remember reading an interview with producer Felix Pappalardi in Hit Parader magazine where he said engineer Tom Dowd plugged Eric's guitar directly into the mixing board, overloading the input till Clapton was pleased with the sound. The 100 watt Marshall's Cream turned up at the studio with were just impossible to record properly. Makes sense given the technology at the time and the fact that Super Leads were designed for stage, not studio use.
A lot of Disraeli Gears definitely sounds like the guitar is going into the mixing desk. But not all of it. Sunshine of your Love sounds like a Marshall plexi to me. A lot of the tracks from the studio side of Wheels of Fire also sounds like they put Clapton straight into the mixing desk.
The problem wasn't so much that the Marshall's were not meant to be used in the studios to record. Hendrix used them very loudly in the studios in England and would blow away the offices next door. Chas Chandler and Jimi had arguements over recording levels. Clapton also recorded the bluesbreakers beano album with his JTM 45 cranked. The issue was that the album was recorded in Atlanic studios in NYC amd it was a real tiny space for that sound to be captured correctly. Not so much of a problem in studios with large rooms.
@@tonebender69 Mic bleed would have indeed been the bigger problem in a smallish space. Dowd was one of the master recording engineers of the latter 20th century but until that time, he'd never recorded a band quite like Cream. This is just speculation but there were probably heated discussions on how the band wanted to be recorded and how the record company wanted their product to sound. Compromises had to be reached and to Ahmet Ertegun and the Atlantic execs, Tom Dowd was god, not Clapton. LOL!
@@sprague49 😂 yes! Absolutely. Tom Dowd was incredible as well as Pappalardi. They both had much to add to the pot. A great album and accomplishment for all involved.
So glad that you talked about Eric Clapton. I think the Bluesbreakers Beano album is where electric guitar rock tone really began. But, certainly, with Cream, Clapton developed the sound further.
So... Jack and Ginger didn't like each other before Cream (never knew that). I wonder how large the Cream catalog would be if they actually liked each other!
@@ahmedrashed78 What do you mean, 'not permitted here'? It's medicine! There is NO THC in it! It's the CBD compounds that attack cancer! I've seen some1 terminal in S4 like you, go back to S2 in a few months!
My first ever public performance was doing the acoustic version of Layla from Unplugged. I was so nervous that when I went to strum the first chord I missed the strings completely. It is still a track I play a lot and he is still up there with the very best.
@@miromontagnani6539 I bought one in the 90s and thought it was harsh and toneless. Having since watched vids revisiting them I now know I was totally right.
You're all wrong. He used Lace Alumitone Deathbucker pickups, a Digitech "Crossroads" distortion pedal, played through first gen Crate solid state amp passed over the freon coil of a refrigerator for the reverb effect. lol.
Clapton's double-live "Just One Night'" with Albert Lee is my favourite Clapton record. It came out just after Dire Straits "Dire Straits". Both those records have awesome clean tones. I believe they were both using Music Man amps.
@@cacornett58 Lee's playing was a real eye-opener for me as well. I spent hours learning licks from that album. I bought Just One Night, Stage Struck(Rory Gallagher), Mahogany Rush Live and Hendrix 'Concerts' on the same day at a record store on Young St in Toronto in around 1980. . That was a good day. :)
I really appreciate the "Sound Of" series you're doing; I'm learning about sounds that I've heard on records and had no Idea how they were produced. This "Woman" sound is one I've always called creamy since I heard it best on records by Cream, now I know what others call it. Anyway, thanks, and I thought the tone you got from the Strat was the best but that's just my ears.
When I watch these videos of younger musicians admiring those of "my" era (born in 1959) I get the impression that they are more reverent than I have been toward the great artists. Somehow that gives me hope that good music still has a future in spite of the garbage that is so prevalent now. Rhett, you are not only one of those younger musicians I speak of, but you May be the Best of them.
1954 I heard Rhett and I thought I’m not that old I just hit one year past retirement age. I may feel it I I ain’t that old. It’s just the mileage. ;) KEEP AT IT RHETT!
Great video. Cream's record engineer Tom Dowd (RIP) was instrumental in helping Eric find that "Women Tone". Tom told me personally, they experimented all kinds of ways to find the sound they wanted, even resorting to tearing holes in the Greenback 25 speakers !!
Rhett, you've brought back cherished memories for me. I remember hearing those Clapton sounds for the first time on Disraeli Gears and the Wheels of Fire. What I thought way back when was that Clapton was just going through his regular set-up, LP, Marshalls, and the secret sauce was I think he had his favorite toy back the, clicked on. His Wah-wah, which undoubtedly was a Cry Baby. Fast forward 55 years and I still can't say my first guess was wrong. By 67 I'd been playing guitar for 4 years and had scraped up enough for a cheap Kent 335 knockoff and bought a Heathkit amp, which my dad commandeered to put together. I had the cheapest off brand Wah-wah I could buy. It did make the Wah-wah sound, but the pit was so crunchy I started using it set in one position. It was during those days I pretty much replicated that woman sound, and it was quite by accident. It took some major convincing to get my mom to let me play my albums in the house and that was only when my dad was not home. But playing my guitar in my room distorted, with feedback and if I played it at night, I could hear our local AM station through it if I wasn't playing. You don't know what you missed playing in those days. Anyway, try using just a Wah-wah clicked on with beginning of the wah setting and just leave it there. BTW - earlier I'd become addicted to the Guess Who American Woman sound and read about the guitarist building his own box for a "violin" sound, which is what he used in that album. It may have been the same article, but I found the diagram in Popular Mechanics on how to build my own Fuzz Box, which I did. It explained the wave form of the fuzz sound as just clipping off the top and bottom of the sine wave. It actually worked pretty good! I think I eventually through it away, but in 1967, it was bitchin'!
Thank you. I'm a bassist and a hobbyist. I make my own little tunes on a DAW, where I write and play all the parts. Guitarists tell me to cut the low end and it sounds too thin to me. I usually stay away from the solo pick-up. This points me in a direction I was already heading, and it's perfect with my Wildkat.
Years back, i chased this tone obsessively and got pretty close. To me, there are a lot of things to tone and something that gets overlooked is speaker distortion. Those old celstions when overdriven sound pretty sweet and contribute to the tone. You need wayless volume to get that sweet overdrive tone with the real thing. I also dabbled with a treble booster. There was a theory many years back he was using one in John Mayall and it carried over to Cream. Whether or not he did, it got me close. The boost pushes the woolyness away and leave you with that singing woman tone. I used a Tokai Les Paul copy (Japanese) with AlNiCo 2 pickups, a Dallas Rangemaster close booster into a 50 watt Laney Supergroup combo (almost identical to a Marshall electrically other than a few resistors, power section and Partridge transformers instead of Drakes. He certainly used a boost for years in those Signature Clapton guitars. They sounded awful though, but that might have been the lace sensor equipped model i tried. I think these days he uses a pedal.
Rhett, is it possible that you could do like a compilation of your intro songs, even if they're covers? They sound awesome and are something to take inspiration from
Great video topic. I was just experimenting with this tone on my 61 reissue SG last night and it a great tone for sure. It sounds like a wah pedal all the way back in the heel position. Another cool tone is to turn the tone all the way down on the neck pickup and then turn the tone all the way up on the bridge pickup and then putting the pickup selector switch in the middle. You get a really great combination of both and it’s almost like turning your guitar into a Wah pedal.
I heard Cream at the Village Theater (later known as Fillmore East) in Sept. 1967 and the performance that stayed with me was 'Spoonful' played in the tempo and style of the studio version, not the one on "Wheels of Fire"...slower, heavier. The 'Woman Tone' on that was monumental...and so loud my ears rang for days afterward, and I was in the nosebleed seats of the theater!
I’ve been dealing with that all month after I bought me first Mexi Stratocaster, I’ve had an old Epiphone Les Paul, a classic Nylon and my wife’s acoustic to use. I told her about it but she wanted me to sell some of my dads old antique sci fi novels to get the money before I went to guitar center. Lol and she’s usually pretty cool but yeah they get envious that I spend so much time practicing everyday after work instead of doting over her but I’m not that much of a romantic guy I guess I’m pretty self reserved and she’s beginning to understand my love language but she’s young she’s only 19 bout to be 20 and we have a two year old in the mix, so yeah I probably shouldn’t have bought the strat.
@@chowderwhillis9448 My guitar store has a sign by the register. For $10 tip I'll print you another receipt that shows what you told your wife it would cost.
One acoustic guitar in 7 years cause when we had to move to an apt I thought about the neighbors and noise/music. My wife says it’s ok to buy whatever I wish so long as we can afford it, but family comes first afore them thar geetars in my mind. Makes fee a more pleasanter time. However I hear a Strat calling out to me, very soon. ;)
I have very good memories of the Clapton Unplugged cassette. One year my family went camping and that was our road trip tunes. While camping we ended up buying a puppy which we named her Layla. Good to know that someone has fond memories of Clapton unplugged specifically on cassette too lol.
Great gear talk, but you forgot to mention that a major part of the tone comes from your fingers and hands and the pressure you apply to the strings, as Eric also stated in that video. Still, you did a great job showing how to get close and very nice job playing them. One of my all-time Cream favorites is Tales of Brave Ulysses. I always overplay it, then when I listen to the original it is striking to me how little is actually going on, there is a lot of space and subtlety that is almost impossible to replicate. Not to mention, Ginger Baker's snare stab is never in the same place twice.
Rhett, you nailed it on this one. I play a '91 Gibson SG Celebrity Series. For years, I almost never touched the tone controls. I recently got a Line 6 POD Go and downloaded two different Clapton/Cream patches from the marketplace. Neither one sounded right, until I switched to the neck pickup and rolled back the tone control. It was perfect. I was amazed. Would you consider doing other artist tone series? Like what's the "Mississippi Queen" sound? Or what's the "Bad Company" sound?
Back when I was using Marshalls, everything was dimed and I used no pedals. Turning down the Bass control actually cuts the overall volume. This is due to the design of the tone stack. Another thing (and I got this from a couple of collectors of old Marshalls) the early stacks had 20 watt speakers. The 100 watt heads actually put out about 80 watts, so the speakers were right at their limits and the voice coils were saturating. To save my ears when using 3 stacks, only one head was used (the other 2 were on standby) and only the lower on-stage cabinet and the upper off-stage cabinet were being driven. That way I could move around and find just the right spot to stand in for my happy place. As for the guitar ( had a Les Paul custom) I read an article that said the woman tone resulted from having both pickups all the way up, neck tone off, bridge tone on full. This works very well, but I prefer the neck tone on and the bridge tone off. To each his own. Thanks for reminding me that EC was a master craftsman of guitar when I was just a teenage wannabe. (BTW there is a Bluesbreaker album with Mick Taylor, before he joined the Stones, that has some awesome guitar work. You can see why the Stones picked him up.) Thanks for a great video.
I was a little older at the time but man that unplugged album really got me into Clapton. I was 15 and had been playing for about 3 or so years. For the next two years I learned every song on the album. Most of my teenage years were spent focusing on metal. 20s and 30s were about the same but Clapton was always there. Now in my 40s I spend a considerable amount of time studying Clapton. He’s definitely been the most influential player of my life.
Always amazes me how complicated everyone makes the woman tone thing. It's one of the first tones I learned how to achieve on the guitar. Plug in to a Marshall style amp with a Gibson, switch to the lead or neck pickup, volume knob on 10, tone control on 0. Clapton even says exactly how to achieve the "Woman Tone" in a well-known interview from '68.
Thanks for posting, Cream was also a huge influence on my playing as well, and the more I listen to them the more amazed I am. For me another inovater of this sound was Leslie West from the band Mountain, who I felt were the American version of Cream and whose bass player produced Cream, Felix Papalardi, listen as an example to Dreams of Milk and Honey. 👍🏻
In 1967 I went to the Murray The K show in NYC, specifically to see The Who on their first US tour. This was a show that included a number of bands, each just playing few songs. Another band that knocked me out that day was Cream. It was also their first time in the US, I believe.
I recently wired up a guitar Les Paul style, with dual volume/dual tone and I used the “50s” wiring. You may be aware of the various pros and cons of using this vs. 60s wiring, but one very interesting thing occurs when you completely roll off the tone for either the neck or bridge- it gives you a slight bump in the mids that gets you that woman tone sound. Now if only I had a Plexi...
The Holy Grail tone from the Cream era to me is the Crossroads sound on the 335. It still holds up all these years later. Cream is easily my favorite Clapton and when I was a teen in the 90's I was absolutely in love with Cream and they're still my favorite British band.
Great video today Rhett. I use to get the "woman tone" on my 89 USA Strat with a half cocked Wah. I stumbled onto to it by accident. I use to set my wah half cocked because of German rock guitarist Michael Schenker. I always loved his tone. At the time I had a Gibson V, 50 WT JCM 800 half stack. Could dial up his tone and the "woman tone". Unfortunately my V was stolen and yes that Marshall was awesome but you could hear me 2 blocks away so like a goof I sold it. Didn't know any better. I was 19 and needed the money. Wound up with a 89 USA Strat and a 74 Fender Bass man Front 10 pro 50 WT. Still have those two pieces of gear. Had the Strat refretted two years ago and am going to restore the Baseman and flip it. I'm just a bedroom player anymore so big amps are out.
Beano album preceded Clapton's Cream days...just barely. "In John Mayall & the Blues Breakers, Clapton was using a Marshall Bluesbreaker - a JTM-45 combo amp. The JTM-45 uses KT66 output tubes and a GZ34 rectifier tube, giving the amp about 35 watts of power. The combo version of the JTM-45 (Bluesbreaker) had an open-back cab with two 12” speakers." PS) I love your RU-vid channel!
I use the bridge pickup on my SG with the tone rolled off to get the sound. I swapped out the cap with a bumblebee repro. A Vibrolux Reverb with a 12-inch JBL and a pulled preamp tube. Works for me.
I agree... There's gotta be a booster or fuzz that EC is just completely not thinking about. Im thinking thats where the magic is, and that woman tone on a Les Paul would be solely on the neck pickup with the tone know at about 3.5... Just guessing.
No treble boosters or fuzzes on Eric Clapton tone. Just a Marshall with so-called "bass" circuit, G12M-20 or G12H-30 speakers and a guitar with PAFs humbuckers, and that's it.
Dude, we both started playing guitar because of the Unplugged Clapton performances! That's so wild - that unplugged Layla performance is definitely the pinnicale moment I decided in my 2 or 3 year old brain that I was gonna play guitar just like him one day! Truly an amazing guitarist and inspiration to all young (and old) players
Another great way to get close to the woman tone without a humbucker guitar is a Clapton strat... the lace sensors/noiseless pickups with the boost wound all the way up and tone durned down is pretty magical in its own right
I love these kinds of videos. But when I'm just plugged in and trying to dial in a tone, I get lost in the options. Do I adjust the EQ, what channel I'm on, do I crank up the gain or use OD, change pedal settings, use a different guitar/pickup, use a different pickup, mix pick ups? Paralysis by analysis or something like that. I'd love to see a video about how to go about this, like is there a logical order in what to adjust first to last? As I'm getting into pedals, how do I establish a good clean tone? Where do I start to get close to the Woman Tone, or whatever tone I'm looking for?
Great video for great topic 👌👍 Eric clapton is one of the greatest guitarist of all time 🎼🎶 and my favorite clapton era is cream 🍺 Well done Rhett Shull your content is great ❤️🌹✌️
Great 👍...you make my day ...i grow up with eric music ...I m 47 yo and still listening to cream and eric until now and even i stop playing guitar since a long time...but you know what for the love of white room I pick up my old 40 years Yamaha studio lord 400s and magic happens...my favorite tone ever...you miss just wah pedal in your video but still...good job...a big thanks from so far...marrakech Morocco 😇😉
You're close but I think if you go back and listen to Clapton's tone, I think he's using a fuzz. Quite possibly a ToneBender®. There's just a fuzziness about his sound that you hear particularly well when he goes down to the lower notes. You can hear that clipped, gated kind of shizzle that happens with a fuzzbox.
Is it just me or did Eric describe taking all the bass off using the tone knob ( which doesn’t make sense) maybe a mis-speak? He describes turning the tone knob to zero which is accurate but turning the tone knob all the way down would ONLY leave you with lower bass-y frequencies? Maybe I’m wrong but I watched it back a couple times
Yeah that’s what I’ve heard every time I’ve seen that vid.... to me it’s just misspeaking in the moment , sort of tongue twister . Meant to say roll off or down to 1or so “tone” to get all bass ...... but in speaking said “bass” instead of tone control
I'd say my favorite example of the woman tone is probably I Feel Free. That is such a cracking song. The warmth of Clapton's solo tone on it sounds very much like a saxophone.
*uses walker to get as close to the speaker as possible and tries squinting to make out at least the edges of all the stuff on the screen but has to quit as usual due to my abysmal visual acuity brought on by old age “EXCUSE ME SONNY BUT I’M A LITTLE BIT HARD OF HEARING! WOULD YOU MIND TYPING A LITTLE LOUDER, PLEASE?!? 😂😂😂
Michael Ireland Wow, you're old ?I'm really old... I saw EC with the Yardbirds at the Trade Union Hall in Watford, with Cream at the Marquee and the original Albert Hall concert...still sounds just as good to these old ears 55 years on...thank you EC for the great drive you put into my young life!
Oh I love clapton and the first band I ever heard was cream, I loved the white room, that was the first i English rock song I’ve ever heard, (I am indian btw) he is my guitar hero and he inspired to pick up the guitar, now I’m 15, I have my first electric guitar ( like Jimi Hendrix, he had his first guitar in the age of 15 too.) and I’m practicing, I don’t like pop songs from nowadays, I love 60’,70,80’s rock, blues and metal. The first song/solo I learned is solo of “while my guitar gently weeps” by beatles and solo by Eric.
You have to be Wolfmother to sound like Wolfmother. No matter how hard you try, you'll never sound exactly like your favourite musicians. Because you are not them. Secondly why would you want to? Don't you want to be unique ?
"younger" dudes (I'm assuming your under mid 30s) getting what good music is does show there's hope in society. 🤘😆edit: wait, you said you were 2 when Clapton's unplugged came out..jesus man! I nailed it to almost the yr.
Rhett, you and I must be kindred spirits... My dad played only two tapes on constant repeat in his truck for YEARS... Clapton unplugged, and Alabama's greatest hits... I have had every lyric, every bit of commentary, and certainly every song melody memorized since I was 8 years old... To this day, Clapton Unplugged is in my top favorite albums just because the place it holds in my musical life... To this day, whenever I try out an acoustic guitar, I do so by playing the Clapton: Unplugged version of "Old Love" and Dashboard Confessional's "Standard Lines"... If an acoustic can articulate through those two tunes, it's a keeper...
Well Rhett is talking about it in this video, but I think the wah is part of it. If you notice in the recordings, when the woman tone is going the wah follows pretty closely, but you never hear the wah kick on. Clapton kicks it pretty hard in that interview video, so probably just preferred to keep it in a spot he liked so he didn't have to kick it on and off a bunch.
This... nailed it John. This is how I have accomplished the woman tone for years. The Vox wah is crucial for the correct tone. Isolated the guitar tracks and you can hear bleed from the studio monitors but you can clearly hear the guitar was doubled on the rhythm tracks which was accomplished by recording straight into an MCI console. Engineer Tom Dowd convinced Eric to do this to bring back the clarity lost while recording at extreme volumes. Dowd mixed the two tracks after the band left the studio to maintain the warmth of the fool SG recorded with multiple Plexi amplifiers and the clarity going through the soundboard. Eric had stated in an interview that he “thought” he doubled the rhythm with a Les Paul, Tom said it was just the SG.
@@datguitarplayer1656 it’s been years... Tom Dowd put out an audio biography called the “language of music” detailing the numerous adventures of him running the board for numerous artists. He details the Cream story and even adds how pissed he was when the band ordered up a limo after day three and abruptly left, requiring him to finish the mixing by himself. Awesome book for tech nerds like myself. So some of that lead tone on the record is due to Dowd and what he was doing after they left. Funny thing is the record label hated the song and didn’t want it included but Dowd convinced them to keep it after he mixed it. It was considered too psychedelic and they despised the lyrics.
Awesome video for an all time great tone. Clapton looms large in my playing too. I was born in 86 so obviously wasn’t around for the Bluesbreakers/Cream heyday but my parents had a copy of a Clapton Best Of from 1991 which I always loved as a kid (incidentally, it had the thickest CD I’ve ever seen!) and it had a picture of Blackie on the back of the booklet. So when it came time for me to get a guitar I asked my parents for one like Claptons and pointed to that photo of Blackie. Unfortunately the guitar shop was out of black Squier Strats so I ended up with a Brownie rather than a Blackie but hey, can’t win em all right? 🤣
Absolutely love these tone videos Rhett. It’s an incredible achievement to build this channel in the first place, and then to reinvent it to an extent after the Backstage Journals became impossible. Well done to you and keep them coming. 🎸🎸🎸
When Cream broke up, he played an instrumental Sunshine Of Your Love at shows, dedicated to "The Cream". The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At Winterland (Rhino Records) Lulu Show, BBC, January 1969, the famous show where the producers wanted Jimi to turn Hey Joe into a duet w/Lulu, & he said OK. Instead, he sang the first two lines of Verse 1, the last two lines of Verse 3, then stopped the show & said "We'd like to stop playing this rubbish and play something dedicated to The Cream, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton" & launched into Sunshine Of Your Love. After about a minute, he says "They're gonna cut us off now" & keeps playing. They were then banned from the BBC.
I was reminded of Clapton's woman tone while playing my Esquired Tele when I put the 3-way switch in the fixed cap (0.022uf) position directly into the dimed out clean channel of my California Marshall Valentine aka Carvin X-60 w/a factory-installed Celestion; it has an imported twin railed humbucker that's P90 hot...wow! Great video insight to this beautiful tone!
