StudioRoll

Get Duane Allman’s guitar tone: here’s how

Even hardcore fans of the Allman Brothers may not be aware of the lengths to which Duane Allman went to get his “cleaned-up Clapton” guitar tone–especially in the age of analog signal processing and vacuum tubes.  Thankfully, Gibson spills some of Duane Allman’s secrets in their latest Tone Quest article.

The ingredients in Allman’s tone recipe included a ‘59 Les Paul at the beginning of his career, but Duane quickly evolved into a virtual guitar grease monkey:

Of course, there are fine points. For example, Duane’s and Dickey’s Marshall cabinets were modified. They were half-open-backed and, instead of the 25-watt Celestion “greenback” speakers that gave Clapton his distinctive Cream-era howl, boasted JBL-D120s for a cleaner sound. Duane also used circular picking to soften his attack and increase his speed.

Then there’s Duane’s beautiful slide technique. He most often played in standard tuning, which begs a more melodic approach. And his choice of a coricidin bottle – too short to cover all six strings at a time – precluded Elmore James–style full chords, so Duane favored triads. He also muted the strings with his middle finger behind the slide, which he wore on his fourth digit, to remove any unwanted or random harmonics.

And speaking of Elmore, when Duane did play in open tuning he typically opted for E (E-B-E-G#-B-E), also James’ open tuning of choice, yielding masterpieces like “Statesboro Blues” and “One Way Out.”