X-rated Bob wrote
Yes, but that tends to happen on quite a small scale. I don't mean "infrequently", I mean that those signature licks are little building blocks that will get combined with all sorts of other things before you come up with something that you can call a "solo" or a "riff". There's a couple of things I hear repeating in different performances by Mark Knopfler, but they come and go quickly, you wouldn't think for a moment that he'd transplanted the riff or solo from one song into another.
Not quite transplanted, but not nearly completely fresh from one song to the next. There is a particular lick that Knopfler pays which note-and-position wise is more or less identical to a favourite of SRV's. Yet they sound so different, because of the tone, the phrasing and articulation etc.
It's exactly the stuff you mention that makes it so hard to emulate a famous guitarist. There are so many similarities in terms of "what" they play, that it's more important to get your head around "how" they play. You can't just "play some pentatonics", because hell you'll end up somewhere between BB King, Clapton, Page, Slash, Eric Johnson, Robben Ford, Santana etc. etc.
One thing to mention on top of all this, for anyone entering this challenge: it's often the way the guitar fits over the underlying music that helps create that signature! Don't neglect your backing track if you're trying to nail that authentic sound (unless your artist was a solo acoustic chap, for example). ?
