Conference napalm::guitar

    
    
    	It refers to the crying sound that he gets from blackie that is
    close to a human voice... (woman crying?)  Lemme see, I guess I'd
    recommend listening to double trouble and Frisco Blues, but my mind
    (delicate thing that it has become) is failing me on the song that he
    really cries on.. can anybody else help..  Or if I'm completely full of
    guano, let m eknow...   BTW, blues, at least the old kind, was aimed at
    making guitar parts reside in the rhythm and sound like a human
    voice...
    
    
    Steve

    Some Clapton solos???
    
    I thought he only played one
    
    
    andy

    
    
    
    	Ha ha.. seeeee I really can take a joke...  ;^(

    "I Looked Away" from Derek and the Dominoes

    I think the women tone comes from an old SG that he used moons
    before "Blackie" or any other strat.  It's the neck pickup with the
    tone control rolled back some..  Definately a gibson tone.
    
    I read this in a magazine some time ago.  Trick is, getting that 
    tone without making muck out of what your playing.  A true Clapton
    gift.
    
    jc

    I don't know why everybody solos on the bridge pickup all the time, the
    neck pickup sounds much better to me when overdriven (less screech). 
    Also, check out Leslie West's stuff with Mountain...
    
    The big reason you can't think of any recent examples is that nobody
    likes to use Gibsons anymore  8,(
    
    							Brian
    
    

    Opening riff to Sweet Child O Mine - Slush.
    
    Bridge position.  Close to the "Women" tone.
    
    jc

    Except me. I love that fat, fat sound.
    
    - Ram

   And me, who uses a Gibson in the neck position quite a lot of the time.

   'Course, I don't use a SGE->DSP->ADA->RACK, either.  Must be 'cause I 
   don't care to sound like everyone else.  :-)

   We're in good company though.  I've always thought of Santana's classic
   sound as being neck pickup-based, though I've never heard (or thought) of
   it as a "woman tone".  (I'm thinking of stuff like the first part of
   "Fluer de Moon", etc, here.)

   -- Sam

    
    Check out the new Allman Bros album.  Lots of fine neck-pickup solos
    happening.
    
    Kevin
    

    I thought the 'woman sound' was achieved by finding "that special
    place" between the middle and neck pickups on the old 3-position
    switches...
    
    	joe.

    I don't know what the "woman sound" but I'm listening to a tape right
    now by our own Jerry (Scary) White playing "Wonderful Tonight" and he's
    got a beautiful singing tone that sounds like a human voice.  Pulled up
    the hair on my neck.
    
    Good work, dude!
    
    Greg

    This is a riot... reading all the different impressions folks have
    about the legendary woman tone...  I might as well put my viewpoint
    in too.  I agree with the Gibson SG opinions.  I always thought a 
    good example of Eric's woman tone was in the tune 'Strange Brew'
    off the Disraeli Gears album.   I think the woman tone is produced
    most faithfully by an SG using the bridge pickup with the tone 
    control backed off completely.
    
    I saw Cream live at Madison Square Garden back in '68... during
    that show Eric definitely got many of his classic tones... 
    including the 'woman tone'... he was playing a Gibson Firebird
    thru a wall of Marshall stacks.
    
    Steve

Might as well join in...

There was a movie of Cream's final concert in the Albert Hall, 1968.
It included an interview with Clapton where they asked how he got the woman-
tone.
He demonstrated on a Gibson SG (presumably through a bank of Marshalls and a
wah-wah pedal) on the neck pickup with volume at 10 and and bass at 0.

When I bought an SG some years later I tried it - it really works!

	leon

    re .-1
    
    what was the name ofthat movie? 
    
    thanks - Dave

    RE: .15
        YEP! That's it!
    	Les Pauls work well too!  
    
    Rock on,
    	    Fred

    re: .16
    
    "Cream's Farewell Concert"
    One of my life's regrets was not getting to that gig. I was at London
    University at the time but had a commitment to the college drama
    groups opening night. Any way the film is quite good if you can get it,
    is it on video ?
    
    Richard Bell

    
    I've seen the video around, but the last time I checked the purchase
    price it was like $90!!!  That's one I would buy if it dropped down to
    about $20.  I saw it once, on channel 5 out of NYC, back around 70-71.
    
    US noters may want to keep their eyes peeled when watching VH-1 on
    cable, they sometinmes run films like this on weekends.  I taped a 1972
    Traffic concert film  last year.
    
    
    							Brian

    I picked up a copy of Cream's Farewell Concert video at Rockit in
    Nashua for 15 or 20 bucks, about a year ago.  It was not the greatest
    concert footage I ever saw; grainy, too many facial closeups (I want
    to see guitars, man!) and cheesy psychedelic special effects.
    
    Is there, perhaps, another version around?

Wasn't this the film which concentrated on some demented member of the
audience in the 3rd. row trying to shake the dandruff from his hair...?
*DC

    If 'woman tone' is best produced by an SG on the *neck* pickup with
    the tone control backed fully off... it occurs to me that Clapton may
    not have 'invented' the tone technique... I've just been listening to
    an old copy of BS&T's first album (child is father to the man) and 
    almost all of the lead work by Steve Katz (who played an SG) is done
    using a very bassy and warm sounding neck pickup setting...
    
    Which also reminds me....
    
    I bet y'all didn't know that SG is the designation for
    Gibsons  Steve Goodwin  model...  (insert oh-so-many smiley faces)
    
    /sg

    
    
    yes please, I'll have two!