Scofield AC30 tone

Jens

Jens

Power User


Hi Folks,

I was trying to get this tone:
YouTube - ‪John Scofield & Chris Minh Doky performing Alone Together..mp4‬‏

Turned out to be quite hard. It helped when I noticed how soft he picks, I suspect he turns up the amp and then plays really soft. I was trying to do that in the recording and also how he alters the tone by picking near the neck or near the bridge, since that is really a big part of his sound (to me Scofield phrasing is a lot of right hand dynamics and movement interacting with the amp or OD pedal)

The PEQ at the end of the patch is for the K10 just bypass that. FX loop is into my PC.

Any feedback is useful! This is what I do to get better at programming the Axe :)

Jens
 

Attachments

  • Scofield 10-06-11.syx
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Hello Jens,

That is outstanding. I think I see where you're going tonally. IMO, perfectly nailing Scofield's tone is not so important as interacting with the dynamics of the amp/drive/whatever in a musical way. You're definitely doing that. What guitar were you playing in the clip?
 
very nice! i posted a scofield patch a while ago, using the dumble sim, but it was quite gainy and i ended up using it more as a blues patch. i did include the wobbly chorus, an octave down, whammy, autowah and a long delay you could switch into reverse for loops (more of the uberjam vibe, than the straight ahead vibe)
 
Thanks guys!

@Jay
I was using my Epiphone Sheraton. It is in most ways very similar to Sco's Ibanez I think. Actually Sco's sound probably changes a lot depending on room/band etc. I found a video of him playing "How Deep is the ocean" with Bill Stewart and Steve Swallow and there his tone is quite dark compared to this, andwhat I like about his playing is indeed the timing and using dynamics and timbre in the phrasing.

@Simeon
I checked all your presets when you posted them, they are still in my Axe. I am guessing you guitar is quite different from mine because I could not really get your preset to sound Scofieldish (what Scofieldish is in my ears of course..) I did use your presets a lot as a resource to see how you where doing things. Thanks!

Jens
 
Play with the relationship between the amp sim master + gain and the volume knobs on your guitar. Push your sim a little harder and try these pickup positions:
~bridge pickup with volume knob rolled back slightly and tone knob rolled back
~bridge pickup + neck pickup with bridge pickup wide open and tone slightly rolled back and neck pickup volume rolled back until things "bite"
 
Nice playing Jens, and the tone is good too.

Some things to think about...
JS has been using strings that are a bit heavier these days than he used to.
I think I read that he's gone as high as a .013" for his high E string.
He's still using round-wounds (as opposed to flatwound strings) from the sound of it and has a plain G string, probably around .018".

I don't have a thinline guitar around the house right now to try your preset with but I tried it with my 175 which can get into Sco territory too. Way way back in the 70's he used to play a 175 too. Believe it or not, but his tone and approach hasn't really changed that much over the years. Guess he got it right the first time.
With my 175 your preset sounds a bit too dark to me.
Your posted clip is not as dark as what I'm hearing here, but it's still a bit on the dark side to my ears and not as full sounding as Sco's tone in the youtube video.
My 175 has flatwounds on it at the moment though and that is definitely contributing to the dark tone.

Nonetheless, I think you'll get closer to your goal with a Top Boost model in the Axe and a bit less gain so it only breaks up when you hit the strings real hard with the vol pot up full, and cleans up better with the pot brought down a bit. If you need more saturation during solo climaxes you might add a Drive Block and kick it in as needed.
Vox's web-site says that Sco is using an AC30 "Heritage" model. I think these models have the Top Boost capability built-in (no precise info I could find on their web site about this model) but I don't know how John set's his up.

I'm using a K10 too (with Jay's suggested mods) and the preset I'm posting sounds a bit more in the ball-park to me.

Try it and let me know what you think.

I didn't spend a lot of time making this preset. It may suck.
 
Thanks Joe!

I am in fact using .13 rounds :)
Oddly enough with my guitar you preset sounds brighter than mine. What I realized when watching the video is that Sco is actually
playing very soft (with his right hand) and very close to the neck pick up, so that's why I have relatively much gain. My recording does not
reflect that as well as it could I think. I always play quite hard, but I got the impression that his setup is like that.

You're right that mine is a bit bright compared to the video. I ended up trading off on the fullness by using the brit cab instead of one of Jays. The
brit cabs has other qualities that gets closer to the sound.

Thanks for the feedback :)

Jens
 
In addition to reverb, part of which may be coming from the acoustic environment in which the performance took place, two sonic elements stand out to me in Scofield's sound: compression and doubling/chorusing. Here's a preset I threw together that I believe approximates those two effects.

Note that compression is extremely sensitive to the level at its input. You will almost certainly need to adjust the threshold parameter to taste.
 

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  • Sco Clean.syx
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Great! I think they are in a (classical?) concert hall so I am guessing that's the reverb.

I am all but clueless about compressors so I tend not to use them...
Actually I wrote them of as cheating untill I started to check out some of the David Gilmour stuff and could not get the sustain he had :)

On this video I don't hear chorus (compared to his earlier stuff with the vintage roland chorus which is to me still THE sco-sound (think of albums like "What We Do" and "Flat Out" are some of
the first I heard, some of the first jazz guitar I liked by the way).

I'll try the preset tomorrow at soundcheck, right now I have a sleeping family very near so noise is out of the question.

Jens
 
Jens said:
Thanks Joe!
I am in fact using .13 rounds :)
Click to expand...

I'm surprised.
They sounded more like lighter gauge strings to me.

Jens said:
Oddly enough with my guitar you preset sounds brighter than mine.
Click to expand...

That's not odd. That's what I expected.
My preset is much brighter than yours and my guitar is darker.

Jens said:
What I realized when watching the video is that Sco is actually
playing very soft (with his right hand) and very close to the neck pick up, so that's why I have relatively much gain. My recording does not
reflect that as well as it could I think. I always play quite hard, but I got the impression that his setup is like that.
Click to expand...

Just as importantly, he works his pre-preamp volume (either at the guitar or with a vol pedal, I didn't watch the whole video) and his tone pot.
If you find my preset too bright for your guitar then try turning the tone pot down about 1/2 way, maybe even 2/3 of the way, when comping.
Lowering the vol pot at the guitar will also reduce the highs.
If that doesn't do it enough for oyu then you can always reduce the Axe's Treble and/or Presence parameters.
If you need more cut for single-note lines then turn the tone and vol back up.

The stock pickups on the Epi Sheratons aren't too bad, but they're not real good either.
You might think about replacing them with Gibson 57 Classics - if you haven't done so already.

Jens said:
You're right that mine is a bit bright compared to the video.
Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood my comments.
I found your tone duller than Sco's tone and with less body.

Jens said:
I ended up trading off on the fullness by using the brit cab instead of one of Jays. The
brit cabs has other qualities that gets closer to the sound.
Click to expand...

Not really a fan of the 2 X 12 Brit cab, but in this case it works well.
You might also try the 2 X 12 Black cab which is the most neutral sounding cab in the Axe (IMO), but then you'll have to dial everything in quite differently.
I often use the Depth parameter in the Amp Block to give more lower midrange body to a thin tone. If doing so causes the bass to get too boomy or muddy it can be reduced with the Low Cut parameter or more simply by turning down the Bass parameter.

Jens said:
Thanks for the feedback :)
Jens
Click to expand...
 
@jens
My comment regarding pickups and pots had nothing to do with the YouTube video posted. I tried your patch without watching the video link.

Having watched the video I believe a lot of that sound involves setting the amp volume hot and then rolling back the pickup volume.
 
OK, here's my latest stab at this along with an audio file.

http://homepage.mac.com/josephgoldstein/ScoTestMix.mp3
[You might have to use Save Link As to hear this file.
On my system it only plays within my browser one time and then any subsequent listens require me to empty my cache.]

Please excuse the really really bad playing.
I'm using my 175's neck pickup with vol pot around 8 and tone pot around 6.

It's not a great preset, but it's in the ballpark.
I gave up on using the Top Boost sim's Bright Switch for this after listening to and playing along with the youtube recording, so the Class A sim might do just as good or better after all.
 
Jens said:
On this video I don't hear chorus
Click to expand...
It's there. It's very subtle, but there is definitely a modulated-delay component (chorus, pitch shift, and flange are all derived from modulated delays) - as well as light compression - in his sound on that clip.

I used a pitch block to get the "chorus" effect, and it is mixed in very low. You will really only notice it was there when you bypass it.
 
joegold said:
OK, here's my latest stab at this along with an audio file.
....Please excuse the really really bad playing.
Click to expand...
Come on, Joey. "Excuse the really really bad playing?" You play really well. Own up to it, man.

It's not a great preset, but it's in the ballpark.
Click to expand...
I think it's a very nice sound. It's got a little more hair on it than Scofield's does in the target clip, but that's jazz.
 
Thanks Jay.
But I am capable of playing much better than that, or so I like to tell myself. lol

I'm attacking things quite a bit more than he did in the video which is one reason why it sounds more hairy on my clip.
 
BTW

This last round of Axe tweaking and recording from me was all done on my NS10's, not on the K10.
So you'll want to drop the corrective PEQ back in there when playing the preset on the K10.
Since my NS10's have a somewhat attenuated top end you might need to bring the preset's top end down a bit too.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, I just put them in my axe. I need to go do a few gigs today. I'll check them there, right now I need to pack.
I also have a few ideas I want to try out myself.

"I'll be back" ;)

Jens
 
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