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Riff Tone

Comfortably Numb

Pink Floyd

Guitarrock1970s

Original Gear

Guitar1969 Fender Stratocaster (alder body) with late-'70s Charvel birdseye maple neck
Ampcirca 1973-74 custom Hiwatt DR103 100-watt head (linked channel input) with WEM Super Starfinder 200 4x12 cabinet (Fane Crescendo 12A speakers), Alembic F-2B preamp
PickupsDiMarzio FS-1 single-coil (bridge), 1971 Fender Stratocaster single-coils (middle and neck)

Amp Settings

gain5
bass6.5
mid5.5
treble5.5
reverb3.5
presence6

Effects & Signal Chain

compressionMXR MXR Dyna Comp
modulationYamaha Chorus pedal (Yamaha RA-200 rotary speaker emulation or Boss CE-2W suggested for emulation)

Notes

Studio recording, The Wall sessions (1979). Riff section uses the Stratocaster with neck pickup, not the bridge (bridge is for solo).

Tone Character(10)
warm and smoothlush sustainslight edge-of-breakupclear note separationethereal ambiencesubtle modulationfull-bodied chordstouch-sensitivecompressed attacknot heavily distorted

Difficulty

The riff is not technically demanding but requires precise dynamics, smooth picking, and attention to tone for the iconic clean/edge-of-breakup sound.

Sources

David Gilmour's guitar tone on Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb: how he got his sound | Guitar World

This tone has been researched 6 times by the community

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Comfortably Numb settings for your amp

Exact settings ToneAdapt players use on these amps.

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