 Taking influence from the Wall of Sound practices established by the likes of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, Loveless was largely recorded in mono sound, as Shields felt it important that the album's sound consisted of "the guitar smack bang in the middle and no chorus, no modulation effect". Shields wavers his guitar's tremolo bar as he strums, which contributes, in part, to the band's distinctive sound. This technique — nicknamed "Glide guitar" — causes the guitar strings to bend slightly in and out of tune. Shields said that due to his use of the tremolo bar, "People were thinking it's hundreds of guitars, when it's actually got less guitar tracks than most people's demo tapes have." The guitarist asserted that unlike other bands of the shoegazing movement of the early 1990s, My Bloody Valentine did not use chorus or flanger pedals. He insisted, "No other band played that guitar like me [...] We did everything solely with the tremolo arm". Shields aimed to use "very simple minimal effects" which often were the result of involved studio work. He stated, "The songs are really simply structured. A lot of them are purposely like that. That way you can get away with a lot more when you mess around with the contents". In a 1992 Guitar World interview, Shields described how he achieved a sound akin to a wah-wah pedal on "I Only Said" by playing his guitar through an amplifier with a graphic equaliser preamp. After recording the track, he then bounced it to another track through a parametric equaliser while he adjusted the EQ levels manually. The interviewer asked if Shields could have achieved the same effect more easily by simply using a wah-wah pedal, to which the guitarist replied, "In attitude toward sound, yes. But not in approach."
