Star tip of the week: John Schofield on finding a signature sound

Another week, another tasty star soundbite from the Guitar Techniques archive. Here jazz guitarist John Schofield describes what it took to get a signature sound in the '70s…

"I first put my sound together during the 1970s, I guess. It was harder then to get a sound on a guitar because they didn't have all the gizmos and stuff that they have now. Right now you can get a multi-effects system and immediately sound like the new Van Halen record just by using the presets. Distortion, chorus, compression - it's all right there.

"Back then that wasn't happening, but I liked the sound of distorted blues guitar and I tried to bring that to jazz. I just wanted to overdrive an amp to try and get a blues sound in a jazz idiom, whereas most of the jazz players were trying to get more of a Wes Montgomery or Jim Hall sound.

"I change amps all the time, from Boogies to Vox to a Matchless DC30, which is a copy of a Vox AC30."

*Example tract taken from Talking Guitars by David Mead, published by Sanctuary, ISBN: 1-86074-620-9. Price £9.99 (UK), $14.99 (USA).