Matt Schofield

Matt Schofield is a British blues guitarist, described by Mad Professor Amplification as a "British Guitar Virtuoso and Blues Hall-Of-Famer, widely regarded as one of the most innovative guitarists to have emerged in generations"¹. Guitar World calls him simply a blues guitarist², and his gear choices have made him one of the more closely watched pedalboard builders in blues. His board centers on two relationships with pedal makers: a tremolo from JAM Pedals, and a series of signature overdrive pedals from Free The Tone and Mad Professor.

Schofield has appeared on That Pedal Show several times, including one episode in the studio with a couple of Two Rocks and one where Dan Steinhardt built his pedalboard³.

Blues tone and the Harmonious Monk tremolo

The tremolo on Schofield's board is the JAM Pedals Harmonious Monk, an all-analog harmonic and amplitude tremolo⁴⁵. The mk.2 version offers harmonic and amplitude tremolo with square, sine and reverse-sawtooth LFOs, tap subdivisions, Tap and Ramp mode, and Legacy speed multiplication⁶. That Pedal Show's product page for the pedal lists its features:

• Both amplitude and harmonic modes
• Master volume knob to go above and below unity volume
• Depth and Mix controls for setting effect intensity
• Double-speed switch on the top panel
• Three-band EQ trimmers inside for the wet sound
• 35mA current draw, 9V DC⁵

Schofield's endorsement appears on JAM Pedals' own artist page for him⁷, and his words carry the weight of a player who has settled:

He says he uses it for everything from classic vintage amp style trem to even "type swirl" sounds⁹⁸. For a player chasing that vintage amp tremolo character, that range is the point: one pedal covering both the classic amplitude wobble and the harmonic mode's subtler shimmer.

Signature overdrives

Schofield's longest-running signature relationship is with Free The Tone. His first pedal connection there was the SOV-2 itself: MusicRadar's review of the Free The Tone custom SOV-2 overdrive describes it as "a reworking of the revered Providence SOV-2 favoured by several prominent guitarists such as Matt Schofield and Carl Verheyen"¹⁰. He later got his own version of it.

The MS SOV and the SOV-2

MusicRadar reported in 2014 that Schofield "had a signature overdrive pedal released by Free The Tone, based on their revered SOV-2 pedal"¹³. The limited MS SOV SPECIAL (MS-1V) ended production in 2013, and Free The Tone later brought the design back as the standard-series MS SOV (MS-2V), keeping the HTS circuit and the internal +/-15Vdc voltage boost while revisiting parts and production to reproduce the discontinued custom series' sound quality¹¹.

Schofield says he is delighted and honored by the return, and that the SOV was a favorite overdrive essential to his sound recipe for many years¹¹. One detail of the signature design came from him directly: the original SOV-2 has true bypass switching, but Schofield wanted a warm and natural input buffer circuit instead, and asked Free The Tone's Yukihiro Hayashi to build it that way¹⁴.

The Mad Professor Supreme

In 2019 Mad Professor unveiled the Supreme, a dual-channel overdrive designed in conjunction with Schofield¹²¹⁵. MusicRadar called it a collaboration that the company deemed "the ultimate guitar overdrive pedal"¹⁶, and Guitar World described it as a dual-channel overdrive designed in collaboration with the blues guitarist². Delicious Audio notes how Schofield prefers to use it: the A side on the neck pickup and the B side on the bridge pickup¹⁷.

The Dimension D theory and other rig ideas

On That Pedal Show in 2018, Schofield shared a theory about Stevie Ray Vaughan's use of the Roland Dimension D. He believes the Dimension D was used on Texas Flood, certainly on the title track, where he hears a little left and right separation on the guitar sound, and he says he heard Vaughan mention it in an interview³. That Pedal Show's video database entry for the episode notes that they bumped into Schofield, "who had a theory about the Dimension D and Stevie Ray Vaughan"¹⁸.

He also described an older rig trick from his years running two amps: he split the amps through a Boss DD-3 set to 100 percent wet out of the wet-only output, so one amp sat roughly 15 or 20 milliseconds behind the other, spreading the sound out³.

The episode covers the Roland Dimension D, the RE-201 and RE-20 Space Echo, and Schofield's visit:

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In the same conversation he mentioned a new album due later that year, recorded with Evan Jenkins and Johnny Henderson³.

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