Matt Schofield and his Two Rock Sig

[wokkel]

Hi all,

last night I visited a gig of the Matt Schofield trio.

Matt is a great player and the trio format leaves him lots of space to show off his excellent guitar work.

He now uses his Matt Schofield signature amp from Two Rock.


http://www.proguitar.eu/ProGuitar.eu/Ma ... ature.html

[img:800:393]http://proguitar.eu/ProGuitar.eu/Matt_S ... Inside.jpg[/img]


I think he did two songs which featured the tremolo, and he used it tastefully. (But clean, not as the haunting tone from
the Deluxe video on youtube).
His cleans tones were very nice, articulate but definately not overly bright.

I think Matt mainly uses a SOV Matt Schofield special pedal to get his overdrive.

But what struck me the most of his tone was the low end.
It's has enormous power and is very focused, clean as well as with overdrive.

From his site I read that he uses heavy gauge strings (11-14-18-28-38-54), so this may be a definite factor.
But his amp must be part of that.

I would love to have this focused bass.
He did a song which was an obvious nod to Jimi and the tone he got indeed reminded me the Little Wing.

Can anyone guess the DNA of the beast? Skyline (?), non-HRM (I guess).


Harald

[JazzGuitarGimp]

Nice looking build. I wonder if the preamp board has traces on the back. I don't see any on the top side.

[ATL Strat]

Nice looking build. I wonder if the preamp board has traces on the back. I don't see any on the top side.

Nope, no traces. I've been through one of their other recent amps with these new boards. The new boards are typical eyelet construction (like their old amps), but with dummy-proof printing on the top -- probably for better quality control. Their builds are cleaner than ever. I remember some of the older amps being pretty rough (and goop covered or upside-down boards) on the inside.

[Structo]

That is a lot better looking build than some I have seen.

Could be the influence of the Builders Guild now.

But, despite nice right angle bends in wires which does nothing but look nice,
it is a tidy build.

I am surprised however at the OT secondaries passing right over the primaries to the power tubes.
Not sure if that is desirable.

Matt talks about his sig amp.
http://www.tristudios.com/matt-schofiel ... ri-studios

Matt's strat.
http://www.svlguitars.com/gallery/sixtyone

[katopan]

I've only recently got into Matt Schofield and am loving his playing and songwriting. Interesting to see his gear.

[jelle]

I would love to have this focused bass.
Can anyone guess the DNA of the beast? Skyline (?), non-HRM (I guess).


Harald

Harald, Why don't you just buy the Two Rock. It looks like a nice build and it has the tone you want.

Plus this is a Dumble forum.

[wokkel]

Harald, Why don't you just buy the Two Rock. It looks like a nice build and it has the tone you want.

Plus this is a Dumble forum.

Nah, I'm not worthy.
Besides, I built me a D'Lite. I will just have to recombine that beast's DNA with mine.

Harald

[FuzzFaceBuilder]

Listening to the TRI studio clip, it sounds like the trem is in parallel with the original signal (think post OD reverb) and is mixed before the PI. Just an observation.

[halfbackstrat]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rboGJ89a044

Here's a great quality video of Matt playing and talking about the sig amp.

When i spoke to him about it earlier in the year, he said it combined a few parts of his favourite amps then modified it to his exact specifications and added Bill at TR's Tremolo circuit, I think a Super Reverb circuit was a big part of it.

A big part of the massive bottom end Matt gets is how he hits the strings, he uses the round side of his pick (SRV style) and he hits it at an angle, sort of diagonal, then by varying the angle he can go from hard to soft strikes. Not sure how clear i've made that!

I use his signature strings, I really liked the very heavy E string, it's like an anchor to play off of.

Hope this helps

[Structo]

I was surprised to learn that they didn't use a bass player.
Then I saw that the keyboardist plays the bass line with his left hand on a bass keyboard.
He does it well enough that they don't really need a bass guitar.
Plus Matt plays heavy strings and it sounds great.

[ToneMerc]

I was surprised to learn that they didn't use a bass player.
Then I saw that the keyboardist plays the bass line with his left hand on a bass keyboard.

He calls him the man with the double handshake. I love his Live from the Archive recording.

TM

[exocet]

I really don't think that Matts "tone" is solely because of that amp. I spoke to his guitar / amp tech (Simon Law) after a gig where he used that amp and Simon said that it was basically a Bassman with a few tweaks.
To my ears, Matts tone has been very similar for a number of years during which he has played through Super Reverbs, TR CRS v1 and v2 (both of which are Dumble ODS derived) and now this latest amp.
My take on how he gets that sound is; Strat with Vintage specs, Heavy Strings, Klon (set to boost only) plus SOV pedal into a pushed fender style amp driving a 4x10 cab....that and the fact that he's a good player.
The new amp looks and sounds nice but is not an essential component.

[wokkel]

Thanks for the insight everybody.

And we didn't even mention the role of speakers


One thing that stands out: if you think about Mayer, SRV, Matt. A big part of their overdrive sound is from pedals. Of course the basis is a Dumble clean, probably pushed (Schofields volume was on 2 o'clock I think).

Why would that be?

[hywelg]

The new amp looks and sounds nice but is not an essential component.

Indeed he sounded very very similar through the Dr Z EZG and Z 4x10 a couple of years ago which is a Fender AB763 circuit. Matt is always in search of that last 0.1% though.

[FUCHSAUDIO]

Seems Matt (like Mayer), uses a Clean Two-Rock and an OD pedal. It should be noted he uses a 4 x 10 cabinet btw. They can have decent bass, but tighter sounding than a 212 might sound. Nice to see the TR build quality has improved.