How to get that big guitar sound?

  • Cheers again - what do people in terms of rolling off the high end, at what HZ? Plus the profiles themselves I am leaving Bass, Middle, Treble on 0, does anyone reduce the bass a bit or is this really personally taste?

  • Cheers again - what do people in terms of rolling off the high end, at what HZ? Plus the profiles themselves I am leaving Bass, Middle, Treble on 0, does anyone reduce the bass a bit or is this really personally taste?

    This is more or less my standard approach (ignore all the small details in the mid-section and just look at the high and low cut)


    As for bass in the profile: I usually leave it in to have a better feel of what I´m playing there - with cutting out the low-end in the EQ you get rid of it anyway.


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  • I don't use any compression on heavy distorted sounds, they are compressed enough. Sometimes people use multiband compression on the lows to tame them but in my opinion it takes some time to get enough experience to work with this kind of compression. And it's also only another way to reach your goal, not the best, not the worst, just another one. :)
    But in my personal opinion I would recommend to be careful with (too much) compression or saturation on heavy distorted sounds, especially if you wanna do some master compression and/or limiting.

  • Hi all,


    Things that seem to work for me are:


    1. As mentioned before, lower you're gain!


    2. Cut off the low and high frequencies. Depends on you're guitar and bass sound.
    For the low frequencies I do it around 80-130 and for the high frequencies I cut around 8000-13000


    3. Use some compression (Waves SSL, Fabric-C are great ones but there are tons of others aswell.)


    4. I usually tend not to pan guitars HARD left or right (depends a lot on the content). I usually save the stereo fields wide angles for fx.
    Let's say you're recording you're left channel guitar, I'd pan it left (if panning is from 0 to 100) 40-75 and another on right 15-35)
    This gives you nice stereo effect on one guitar track. Then I would do the same for right channel guitars. It all varies ;)


    Oh, and a good tip is to try to keep you're mix between 9 to 15 o'clock


    5. Use reverb








    Here's a little sample of a song I'm working. Don't mind my sloppy playing at some parts ;) I intend to re-do all the tracks.


    https://soundcloud.com/onosnd/worlds-08/s-bEKab



    -Feli

    gear>kemper rack-atomicCLR-fcb1010-espViper400-gretschJet-Firebird-7

  • Thanks for that - I've got the sound I want without compression so don't think I'll be adding anything. My reduced gain tip back to everyone else - drop the gain to 5.0 to 5.5 on your profiles and then when you come record multiple parts it all comes together into a lovely saturated distortion - this is with guitar tracked 5 times

  • layer multiple takes, not reamps.
    the subtle imperfections will make it sound bigger.
    use sounds that complement each other.
    4-5 guitar tracks are not uncommon (2 left, 2 right, 1 in the middle <- often a 'odd' sounding midrange heavy sound mixed in low works nicely.
    sometimes a otherwise undesirable tone will do the trick - turn down Character for the track in the middle to give it a speaker-sim type flair.


    :thumbup:8):thumbup:


    Yes.

  • - when I talked to Michael Wagener about guitar sounds, he said that he never compressed distorted guitar


    ;)

    As i remember correctly he got pretty famous for being the first one using an Aphex Dominator limiter for the the guitar sound on Skid Row´s "Slave to the grind". But yeah, that´s no compressor. :rolleyes:


    Edit: I got this information out this interview with Charlie Bauerfeind, for you german speaking guys, it might be interesting...


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8PdgAqi6ZU

  • As i remember correctly he got pretty famous for being the first one using an Aphex Dominator limiter for the the guitar sound on Skid Row´s "Slave to the grind". But yeah, that´s no compressor. :rolleyes:


    Edit: I got this information out this interview with Charlie Bauerfeind, for you german speaking guys, it might be interesting...


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8PdgAqi6ZU


    I guess it's hard to make such a broad, general statement like the one I made about someone who recorded tens of thousands of guitar tracks.
    but I guess the main trend is/was no additional compression, but there always has to be at least one exception to the 'rule'


    as long as you know why you do something, it's fine.
    but if you just go throught the motions, because you think that's how it's done - you're in trouble. ;)