Trying to get a jazz sound

miller8966

Ive been playign guitar for a while and recently have gotten into jazz. With my gear-brownsville electirc and a crate amp whats the best way to get a jazz sound. What type of strigns should i use?picks?..etc etc.

keeponrockin

miller8966 wrote:

Ive been playign guitar for a while and recently have gotten into jazz. With my gear-brownsville electirc and a crate amp whats the best way to get a jazz sound. What type of strigns should i use?picks?..etc etc.

Neck pickup, roll your tone down a little bit.

Pearl Jam and toast

I can get a superb jazz tone from a Fender Strat (mexican even!) just piped strait through to my Fender amp's clean channel. I prefer the 2nd pick up :cool:

seanw1010

tbick strings

samquigley

Heavy gauge flatwounds, neck pickup, tone control at about half-way and you're set.

who's_pearljam?

I depends on the jazz you're playing.
Typically, for that dark smooth sound, neck pickup, and tone rolled back, like they said above. Maybe roll off the treble on your amp, too. Keep the sound clean.

I have an old weirdo archtop guitar with a set of 13 gauge strings on it for jazz, and either use an extra heavy pick, or just fingers.
You can really control your string sound with bare fingers, especially when you're picking out chord structures on just a few strings. A lot of it is about the attack with your fingers or pick.
You have to hit the individual strings right with the pick for that sound, and extra heavy picks work for me, because you get less clicking sound with them.

Of course, you can go the John Scofield route and wail through a Mesa Boogie and all kinds of effects, too! I love his sound.

The Lurker

Turn down the treble a bit and boost the mids, that generally helps a bit.... what kind of tone did you have in mind? John Scofield, Jimmy Bruno?

ianvomsaal

Okay . . . man, a few people on here have given you some pretty good advice. Here's what I do for a jazz tone (standard and fusion styles), I have a Music Degree (Jazz/Classical Performance), but that means nothing, this is purely my experience on a decent jazz tone:

The very best strings I've found for jazz are made by D'Addario, called "CHROMES." These strings are actually a Semi-Flat wound string (not a true flat wound), which gives them quite a bit more tone and response than typical flat-wound strings (normal fat wound strings are quite dead and non-responsive). And contrary to many people's advice about using heavy strings, I actually use a jazz/light 11-50 gauge, which in my opinion are plenty heavy, and are just killer strings for most jazz styles (the package has orange on it). I've convinced many a die-hard flat-wound-string jazz player to try these strings, and I've consistently gotten great feedback (many completely switch to these strings after trying them, and most wish they'd heard about them earlier).

Typically you'd use a hollowbody guitar for standard jazz (I use a 1969 Gibson ES-175 and a 1992 D'Aquisto New Yorker, though I also use Strats, Teles, and Hollowbodies, especially for more of a jazz-fusion style).
Generally you'll use your neck pickup, and you'll turn down your guitar's tone a bit (for a smoother tone), though many times I turn back up my tone knob (and sometimes use my bridge pickup for a change, especially if I'm doing a jazz fusion thing ALA-Scott Henderson).
You'll generally flat your treble and bass on your amp (meaning set both on something like 5), and I boost my mids a little bit (since the guitar is a mid instrument).
Also, I use a specific 1.0mm pick by PICKBOY, called Pos-A-Grip, which is a graphite composite - this pick has a bunch of grip holes in it, and it sounds more like a finger than any typical celluloid or nylon pick.

Anyhow, this is what I do for a jazz tone. Hope this helps you out a little bit better - Cheers . . .

- Ian C.T. vom Saal