Bringing out the fundamental/musical information in guitar tone?

[HCL]

This is something I want to improve with my mixes, I find with ampsims I get a lot of fizz information and not a whole lot of the really important parts. There are a few mixes where the guitars sound really gnarly, like these:





When you hear them on their own at the start, you can hear how they have a lot of high end information without it being "papery" or fizzy. So, any tips? I've gotten roughly similar results using some tapesim stuff but I'm thinking there may be something simpler to it. I'd say this is one of my biggest stumbling blocks personally, keeping the high end clear.

Obviously everything is easier with real amps and I've had better success when I've used them, OTOH I know a lot of great mixes use ampsims and don't have the same issues.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

I think it's just a question of clever EQing and paying close attention to the interaction between the treble/presence settings on the amp, the sound of the cab/mic, and the tube screamer in particular. The tone knob on the screamer is always the toughest thing to set for me, because if you crank it to 100 you get gnarly, tight-sounding tone like in that first video, but it kills so much of the low end on the way in. I also find that killing fizz notes with a super-tight parametric EQ notch can bring out the warm and decrease harshness in the highs, which lets it breathe without sounding crackly.

 

[HCL]

The tone knob on the screamer is always the toughest thing to set for me, because if you crank it to 100 you get gnarly, tight-sounding tone like in that first video, but it kills so much of the low end on the way in.

This.

 

[B36arin]

I also find that killing fizz notes with a super-tight parametric EQ notch can bring out the warm and decrease harshness in the highs, which lets it breathe without sounding crackly.

That's a can of worms though, it's really, really easy to kill a guitar tone by notching out too many fizz frequencies... I've burnt myself quite heavily in the past when I've started notching, my ears have gone into fizz-detection mode and I've ended up killing the tone completely. Nowadays I try to keep any fizz notches quite moderate although they are necessary sometimes.

 

[Jormyn]

Lower your gain, and track an extra pair of guitars of the sound is getting thin.