Have You Ever Seen the Rain
Creedence Clearwater Revival · Pendulum · 1970
The rhythm bed is a clean, dry, midrange-forward electric strum sitting under Booker T.-flavored piano and organ, cut straight into an amp with no pedals. Aim for a bright semi-hollow or single-coil guitar on the neck pickup, volume set just below breakup so hard downstrokes push the amp slightly, treble a touch above noon and reverb almost off. Everything you hear as "air" on the record is the room and the Wally Heider echo chamber, not a pedal.
Where these numbers come from: worked out from the documented rig and the sound of the record
Tuning
Standard tuning, no capo
The record sits in C major at standard pitch, so the rhythm part is open C–G–Am–F shapes with the C/B walkdown into the chorus; Fogerty's whole-step-down Les Paul tuning belongs to other CCR tracks, not this one.
Guitar
- Rickenbacker 325 ("ACME", modified) · Gibson humbucker in bridge, stock Rickenbacker toaster in neck · neck pickup
- Rickenbacker 360 · Rickenbacker toaster pickups · both pickups
Amp
Kustom K200A-4
Russ Gary, who engineered the CCR albums at Wally Heider, says Fogerty's amp in the studio was "alternately a Kustom or tweaked Fender Vibrolux" and that Tom's rhythm guitar went through a Kustom; the K200A-4 has volume, bass and treble plus a bright switch, so use the volume knob for the gain value and leave its trem/vib off here.
Amp
Fender Vibrolux Reverb (JBL-modified)
The band's tweaked Vibroluxes were reloaded with JBL speakers and given a hotter preamp, and Fogerty repeatedly names a Fender for his cleaner and lower-tuned studio sounds; either amp gets you there, but the Fender is the easier match if you want a little tube compression on the strum.
Tone character
clean and dry · jangly upper mids · just short of breakup · tight low end · almost no reverb
Steady eighth-note downstrums over C, G, Am and F, with the only real hurdle being the F barre chord and the C–C/B–Am–G bass walkdown under the chorus.
Want this on your own amp?
These are the record's settings. Tell us what you play through and we'll translate every knob to the amp you actually own — free.
Adapt it to my gearSources
- Classic Tracks: Creedence Clearwater Revival "Fortunate Son" (Mix)
- John Fogerty on his Creedence Clearwater Revival guitar gear (Guitar World)
- John Fogerty reunited with CCR Rickenbacker after 44 years (Guitar World)
- John Fogerty: That Old Travelin' Bone (Premier Guitar)
- John Fogerty on the Making of CCR's 'Cosmo's Factory' (Guitar Player)
- John Fogerty's Amplifiers (Equipboard)
- Creedence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum (Discogs credits)
- 'Pendulum': When Creedence Clearwater Revival Swung In A New Direction (uDiscover)
- John Fogerty's Kustom (Telecaster Guitar Forum)