Players like Freddie, Albert and BB King are most famously associated with Gibson style humbucking pickups, so this is what our settings lean towards. However, latter-day Eric Clapton and all of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s recordings were made using Fender type single-coil pickups.

To get the best out of these, try adding a little more bass at the amplifier and boost the drive a notch or two on the overdrive (also reducing the tone a little). The other settings are unchanged, unless you’re feeling experimental.

FX pedals

First up is an overdrive pedal, which adds thickness and sustain that you can tailor to your guitar with the tone knob (more for humbuckers, less for single-coils). Running the level slightly ‘hot’ adds a nice boost too.

Next comes the compressor. It’s generally best to run this after any distortion effects between your guitar and amp. With our suggested settings, it adds a nice ‘snap’ to the beginning of your phrases.

Thirdly, a chorus pedal is a nice simple way to add a more modern sounding rotary speaker/leslie effect loved by SRV and Clapton. For the finishing touch, a short ‘slapback’ delay adds a little ambience, especially on solos – some players prefer to leave this on subtly all the time.

Listen: BB King - The Thrill Is Gone