Son House — £200 · Beginner Rig

• Use the tone and volume knobs continuously — hollow guitars have a huge tonal range that rewards active playing
• Allow the amp time to warm up (10-15 minutes) before judging the tone — cold tubes sound compressed and flat compared to fully warmed ones
• All the distortion comes from the amplifier, not any pedal — turn the channel gain up until the amp saturates at the desired amount
• Reverb at the end of the signal chain (last in the chain or in the effects loop) produces cleaner, more defined spatial sound
• Use the guitar volume knob as a real-time control: 7-8 for rhythm, full 10 for leads. Players who leave it at 10 the whole time lose half the dynamic range.
• Pick angle and attack vary the tone more than any pedal — parallel to the string gives full chunk; slightly angled gets more pick click and bite.

• ✗Using high-gain distortion — hollowbody guitars are designed for clean and light-drive use. High gain causes uncontrollable acoustic resonance that the pickup amplifies as noise.
• ✗Playing a vintage-voiced amp at low volume — the warmth and bloom of these amps comes from the power tubes working. At low volume the tone is flat and uninspiring compared to the amp's potential.
• ✗Playing at bedroom volume expecting amp-driven tone — the power-tube saturation that defines this gain structure only occurs when the amp is working at substantial output. This is not replicable at low volumes.
• ✗Ignoring the guitar volume knob — rolling back to 6-7 is your rhythm setting; 10 is for leads. Most players leave it at 10 and miss the entire dynamic vocabulary.
• ✗Using a humbucker where single coils are needed — the quack, string definition, and high-frequency air of single coils cannot be EQ'd into a humbucker

Acoustic slide guitar with a powerful, raw intensity — House's Delta blues slide playing was among the most emotionally raw ever recorded, directly influencing Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.