Nail the ToneCream

Sunshine of Your Love

Cream · Disraeli Gears · 1967

The riff is Clapton's "woman tone": a Gibson humbucker with the volume on 10 and the tone rolled down to about 1, into a cranked Marshall 100-watt stack with every EQ knob on full through the darker Normal channel. All the brightness gets pulled out at the guitar while the amp stays wide open, which is why it sounds fat and saturated but never spiky. No pedals — the wah on Disraeli Gears belongs to "Tales of Brave Ulysses," not this track.

Where these numbers come from: the player said these settings themselves

Tuning

Standard tuning, no capo

The riff is played in unison with Jack Bruce's bass, so it sits low on the D and A strings — standard pitch, no capo.

Part: Riff

Guitar

  • Gibson SG Standard (1964, "The Fool") · Patent number humbuckers · bridge pickup (neck pickup for the solo)
  • Gibson Les Paul Custom (1958, three-pickup) · PAF humbuckers · bridge pickup

Amp

Marshall JTM45/100 Super 100 head, 1960B 4x12

GAIN
10.0
BASS
10.0
MID
10.0
TREBLE
10.0
PRESENCE
10.0

The JTM45/100 has no gain knob — the 10 shown is the Normal channel volume, plugged into input 2 of the darker Normal channel rather than the High Treble channel; Guitar World reports a 100-watt KT66 head with one 4x12, while Reverb's account of the sessions describes a 50-watt Marshall half stack.

Tone character

thick woolly midrange · tone knob rolled way down · moderate tube breakup · fat sustaining single notes · dark rolled-off treble

easy

A single-note riff in D on the low strings with a repeated position shift up to the 10th fret and back — easy notes, but it only sounds right with a firm downstroke attack and the bass-doubled rhythm locked in.

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Sources