Brian often replies to emails from students in his course, so ask him how he gets the sound on the particular song you are talking about. He may be using pedals to get that effect and he will tell you which pedals he uses and what settings he has them at. With that said, the guitar makes a difference too. A lot of blues players like the Les Paul for the sound it makes, but you can get good sounding blues from your Fender or other brands too. So email Brian and see what he says.

Jim

Patrick,
Brian is often using his Kemper profiler these days so that may not be helpful. He has often said in the past that you can get a pretty good tone with any amp or overdrive pedals. For a blues sound he typically dials in some overdrive via amp or pedal just so the amp is on the edge of break up. If he plays a little harder it gets a little more distorted. He will always have reverb from a pedal or amp. He almost always uses a little slapback or very short interval delay, ie. sort of one quick echo. That always helps to fatten up the sound.
For the pressure thing just practice what minimum pressure will fret the note until that becomes your norm.
John

I read that the Boss Blues Driver pedal is the most common pedal used by blues musicians. On the other hand, I never saw the results of a proper scientific survey to verify that claim, so it could be fake news.

Here’s a video from Brian to get a decent bluesy sound from “cheap gears”:

but essentially it’s what John said above: dial in the gain to the edge of breakup. I really like that video BTW before it’s a great reminder of keeping it simple and avoid chasing tone / gears.