Hubert Sumlin Tone Secrets!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
- It is I, The Kid.
I'm doing my best Hubert Sumlin impression on the guitar and sharing some of the ways in which I have found I can get closer to his unique sound.
Large portions of this lengthy video is strictly for geeks!
"Nobody notices that stuff, you know. That's why the world's in the shape it's in". I subscribed because that's the truth
11 years later - thank you! This is so great.
When I moved to San Francisco I was recording a song with this cat in Palo Alto BBQ Bob, I said in the lyric old Hubert Sumlin never got enough credit. A badass blind guitarist from Ukraine had gotten me a gig at Vino Locale 2 weeks after...I was wrapping up my gear after and two ladies came out. One, Janice, was talking to me and said you play blues do you know Hubert Sumlin? I was like crazy no one ever said his name. Her cousin was his mgr and I got to see him w James Cotton and meet him and talk to him in his room for 2 hours. You got that snappy sound dialed in
I just want to say THANK YOU for taking the time to explain the details and nuances of your tone quest. This video was freaking awesome!
Can't believe you are generous enough to give this away for free. These are things that keep people (me) up at night. Thanks!
the market is narrower than one might think...
Thanks, Kid! You GET Hubert. Great vibe on your tone and playing.
Over the years, Hubert played all kinds of guitars and amps, but as you explain, his sound didn't come from the hardware - it came from the soul of his playing and his innate ability to tweak any gear to resonate on his own frequency. Give that man a few minutes with any piece of wood, some strings and an amp and he would make it sound like Hubert Sumlin.
Bro you are incredible
Thx sir its good to know there is a connoisseur to carry on with the real sound of Reed and Sumlin rethx again a mucho
That's like a little Albert King in there but whatever man.. I'm dyin lol!
You fuckin rock!
THANK YOU for the hours of work that went into this. We get the result, and you got VAST experience experimenting..........
Thank you VERY much for this lesson. Wishing you MUCH popularity from this video !
V nice playing, by the way ! Love the humour too.
I'm pretty haphazard with strings... I change them when they break, and I'll use whatever's the closest in my gig bag, BUT I generally prefer 11s, so most likely that's mostly what's on this. If i had a dedicated 'hubert sound' guitar, i would probably go for 10s or even lighter. Someone asked me about the amp too, I was gonna lie and say like a 1958 210 Super, but it's actually going direct into my mac with Digidesign's Eleven Amp Sim plug in. Fender Bassman setting most likely.
I love your style man, a whole world of blues experience hidden under a dead pan delivery, fantastic.
Love everything you said there. Thanks Chris!
Hey Kid this is great, thanks.I saw you this summer in Humboldt County, Blue Lake casino. WHAT A GREAT SHOW .
Great video thank you very much, I am going to flip the magnet on the P90 on my Tokai Goldtop after seeing this and experiment. Lovely playing as well mate!
Without a doubt the best video I have ever seen on youtube! Thanks Kid.
Just found you! Thank God! RIP Hubert! You’re very lucky to have met him.
Thankyou you legend, lots of hoursxtgere much appreciated sir thankyou
Amazing playing and tone insights! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for posting this! The first time I heard Mr. Sumlin with Howlin' Wolf, I thought wow, what a tone! He was bitin' and spittin'....
Excellent Excellent kid! Some of Blues guitar I have heard in long time other then the Blues legends them selves! You have those licks dialed in!!
Nice 8 years later and this video pops up on my feed. The tone is sick 👍
Meant to say the Best Blues guitar playing I have heard in a long time! Man I hate typing!
I been a fan of you for along time ,you rock it!
Great vid Kid.I love Hubert and the tone you have found is killer.Nice.
man man man , i REALLY like your playing and tone. great vid
tremendous mate........looking forward to giving this a bash in the morning
keep em coming man :)
This may be the greatest TH-cam video on any subject, ever. Thanks!
Hey Kid Thanks for sharing brother !
I have been obsessed with Hubert and have been doing exactly what obsessed guitarists do... listen, read everything on Hubert I can possibly get my hands on.
Been covering Smokestack doing his exact riff for Tribute. Killing Floor & you are right ! Spoonful dos sound like Freddie King ~ another great one man... my old friend Boom Boom Johnson was a Freddie fan and could phrase with the same dynamics and flair -- God rest their souls. SO, I really picked up what you were kindly layin' down.
Excellent Vid plenty of food for thought......Great playing.
Cheers Mate
Ha! You are awesome! I love your style and sense of humour!
You sir, are a scholar and a gentleman of the highest order!
One of the most original guitar player of his time a huge part of Howlin Wolf's great songs. Dear Kid don't worry about the haters they are everywhere but they are unable to do anything.
Great job at finding & Sharing this almost impossible to get info Kid -- Rock On in blues land bro you are doing great !!!
Sounds great!
This is just the best thing I've seen on TH-cam ever!
Thank you so much for this video and the time it took to figure it all out!
Love the attitude - Love the Playing - Love the cig hagnin' (of course you should quit for your health!) Your demos are so cool and interesting - And those TONES - THANK YOU Kid!
well done Kid! have a celibatory smoke! Hubert was magic, he showed up late for a festival, I played at in Niagara Falls, strolled up on stage while we were mid tune, with a nice new tele, plugged in to my super fx, ch, and said (now you gunna hear some mr.harmonica man)still got that amp, I saw him play in Bethesda md, just before he passed, anything he put his fingers to sounded like Hubert! G.R.H.SOUL
Lot's of fun and honestly very helpful. Thanks man!
... Though, something you said really made me think: My own style. I wonder, how much do I 'borrow' subconsciously in my playing. Great influences shape us... drive us to create and aspire to greatness. I truly appreciate you taking the time to help fellow Guitarists with that quest. =]]
I agree 100%... that is why the world's in the state it's in! awesome tip, thanks
Reminds me of lester bangs from almost famous! Great info and great guy
Earned my sub for killer playing, great humor and attitude.
Nice job! Thanks for doing all the work!
Kid you are AEWSOME! I don't normally watch long vidoes cause I don't have the time but a guitar pickin' friend sent this link to me and I owe him a SERIOUS beer now. God bless! Great job!
" The Kid must be heard . " I totally agree !
This guy is a legend, very badass video.
thx for the vid bro!! great of the use of the tone knobs.. gotta strat n def will mess around!
"That's why the world is in the shape it's in..." Amen....can I get an amen? Thank you Kid for your dedication, humor and love of all things blues.
Keep talking...were listening. Great stuff! Luv your playing. Big big fan. TY!!!!
Great vid, I love playing electric guitar with fingers only. NICE TONE!
Very cool, dude. You are the real deal. Thanks for giving insight into Mr. Sumlin and your own teaching. Lot of guys would rather take their secrets to the grave. So please, keep playiin' and postin'.
I don't mind all ur talkin' bro you have passion for the sound , great video !
Awesome video!
Great playing and tone, thank you for uploading!
Kid you are the best!!
Cool vid and great playing! Is that a '98 R8 by the way?
you nailed it...thanks for sharing....
Great video man, Hubert was great.
Kid's in the "zone" right here, Haha!
Huberet's tone reminds me of the metalic sound of old resophonic guitars with the metal cone resonator. Maybe an electrified cousin of that old blues tone.
This is dope. Respect!
Great stuff! I've found this works better on some out-of-phase guitars than others. Some just don't seem to have enough zip to get a really good Sumlin sound. But this approach (bridge on 3, tone rolled right off, neck on 7 etc.) also gives some good tones when the humbuckers aren't out of phase. Not the Sumlin tone, but interesting all the same. It's even better if you've got three humbuckers and a 6-way selector, so you can bring in the middle PU with bridge and/or neck. You can get sort of a quacky stratty sound crossed with a bit of the honk Kid's got going here. A quack and a honk at the same time...two birds with one stone huh.
Irmão você toca muito, simplesmente fantástico, a forma que consegue tocar apenas com os dedos....posso dizer que virei seu fã, meu parabéns....!
Thanks for sharing your discoveries, kid! Very cool, and much appreciated. I've often wondered how Hubert got those weird tones out of a Les Paul.
Hubert's Les Paul was a 55. That means P90. He was using a Danelectro amp as well from the same period. nice video!
An earnest review and that was very informative!
Very cool. Got to get myself a goldtop on of these days.
"The Kid must be heard", thanks for sharing, you have some great playing skills, love the Throbaks, PG 102's, If I could afford another set I would have them, as there is no end to the sounds you can get out of them in the middle position, by just changing the neck to higher volume than the bridge, or reverse. Using a RedPlate Blackverb amp, between the two I think you can get just about any sound you want. Do enjoy your passion for playing,and insite to the great masters of the blues guitar.
I'm hoping to become viral the kid must be Hurd!!!! Never put it together it was Freddie King on Spoonful -- one of my favorite Wolf song next to "Goin down slow"
about dephasing, did you swap the wires or did you reverse the magnets, i dont even know if there's a difference between these methods?
thx for the demo. great playing btw
raffi98 swapping the wires on one volume pot would be the easiest way.
Look up Peter Green Led Paul wiring.
Back in the day patricularly with p90s the magnets would not always get oriented properly meaning South Pole towards pole screws. On a humbucker, you just flip a magnet on one pickup. But on p90s sometimes because there 2 magnets on each they would be assembled accidentally with one or both magnets with north facing the poles. So for instance, the bridge has mags oriented south, and the neck oriented north and the u get full out of phase effect with both volumes equal. But sometimes u get just one mag in a p90 wrong and it is a dead ringer for Hubert's tone.
I had an r6 goldtop with Gibson p90d and I swapped just one mag in the bridge pup with an unoriented a5 and mixed with the regular a2s is was a perfect Hubert tone on the middle position. Much more subtle than the hard out of phase u get using humbuckers with 100 percent phase shift using both.
very good tone and playing. Thanks MM
Miami FL
And as far as that Spoonful goes... I'm so glad you finally showed Hubert's real part, which was a rhythm/chord I just could not figure out, partially because it's so low in the mix. However, Hubert said in an interview that it was Freddy Robinson playing lead, not King. Sure, he may just be remembering incorrectly, but I'm inclined to believe him since Robinson has played on other Wolf sessions.
I had my fun, if i never get well no more😂 Kid will this only work with humbuckers if one pickup flipped? Will this work on our 54 style p90s too? Gonna play around, Thanks
Thanks Kid - keep talkin'!
Got Hubert's tone perfectly. Is there any difference between the tone of magnetically out of phase pickups and electrically? Also with a push/pull pot do you get the same sweet spot when the volumes rolled down a bit?
I love this video!
Kid! Such a character!
What amp are you using on this recording. Great sound, nailed it, thanks for sharing!!
Hey Kid,
You are a treasure young man. I thought I was the only white dude to figure Hubert's
tone out. You are a terrific person. Thanks for the priceless info. Good health
and a Great New Year.
Which amp are you using? Any reverb or echo effect? Thanks you man! Awesome
Sorry if I missed it...what amp u using?
Great vid, btw.
Awesome tones man!!!
If my pickups are not out of phase, would you say I'm f***ed? :) Or is there a workaround? Been thinking of having a push/pull pot added to one of my Les Pauls to get that out of phase sound anyway, so maybe this will get me off my ass to do it. Great vid, attitude/humor, as others have said.
Love it man, keep on
Kid, great sound, playing, cat and info-what amp are using for this ?
Great! I enjoyed it...
Yes ! In my my opinion Kid is one of the greatest Blues guitar players alive . Listen to his words from 12:21 min concerning his conviction that Freddy King and not Hubert played the lead on SPOONFUL , ending with something like "...nobody notices that stuff ...that´s why the world is in the shape it´s in ."
Wow.. I love the style. The only negative I can hear is a personal distaste for so much reverb. No matter. With you, I listen beyond that. Awesome playing, man.
don;t diss reverb. it's the neosporin of music!
that has even MORE of the Hubert sound, and more easily accesible too. They are incredible P90s/ I might make a video with those too.
At the time, this LP had the most Hubert-like sound. I also had a 3 P90 LP, but only 1 tone knob on that, so that don't work.
I've often wondered whether Hubert's Les Paul was, "broken" like Peter Green's. Great video man. Thanks for sharing.
i'd say most definitely. i have played several old gibson that had the out of phase sound. it might not have been that big a deal to them at the factoy,
This is fantastic, thanks for putting this out there. Do you think i could get this tone on a 335 if i wired them out of phase?
yes
"The kid must be heard!" Hahah Great video and great playing man!
"And it still is magic".... definitely man. You do a great job of breaking it down, but to be honest, I'm still puzzled about his tone, especially on a song like "My Mind Is Ramblin" (Howlin Wolf). Can you PLEASE let me know if you have any ideas/clue as to how he gets that quacking tone? It's more than just a Strat 4th position quack on that song, it's like really exaggerated. I know the notes, but I can't get the tone/touch.
Well done! thanks
Thanks for doing this. Much appreciated! Maybe do a lesson on Hubert's finger style and how to play Killing Floor?
Messin with the kid!
Well done! Love that tone... So what were the chords you used in describing the descending passage Hubert must have used in 'Spoon Full?' Sweet!