Crispy highs

ashgallows

ashgallows

resonant manipulator
Oct 22, 2007
275
3
18
Culver City
www.myspace.com
Hi guys, I finally got rid the soldano cab in favour of a 1960A. My tone has imporved a good bit but my highs are still crispy as hell and i cant seem to eq or dial them out. I am all about the fast chuggy stuff like ajfa and demanufacture but they all get this great smooth top end that seems to elude me. is it a compression trick? and eq trick?

chain is :
bc rich warlock-emg81 bridge-6505-red channel-31 band graphic eq in fx loop- sm57-1960A protools.

example, sorry it;s short

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58120386/riot shit guitars.mp3
 
thank you. I am having a bit of trouble gauging the lows, but that seems to be a get the cab off the floor solution. It sucks i dig the responsiveness of the straight on off center thing i used to get this i just want a rounder attack, i think i'll try off axis and boosting some 2.5-5k.

like this, you have some grind but it's a smooth top with some chug to it.
http://youtu.be/gNhN6lT-y5U

(sorry not quite sure how to embed the vid, i tried pasting the code but no video showed up)
 
You really have to listen to what your room is doing. Boominess and an uncontrolled low end is usually caused by a small untreated room. As for bite, back off a little bit with the mic. You get a lot of tone even if you're a couple inches further back than you'd like. The proximity effect is your friend, but the trick is to balance the low end response with the high end. If its not smooth going in, you won't be able to make it smooth out of nothing. Uuuuu may get by with surgical cutting and a lower LP, with another EQ staged to bring back some high end. Some tape saturation might also serve some use.
 
gotcha
@reddog, I will experiment backing it off. usually it's too much of a sacrifice in clarity, but i guess i should experiement some more.

@jack, at this point I have a transformerless 57 and an sm7b. the 7b seemed to have some weird upper resonance which i attribute to the metal grill over the diaphram.
 
Are they v30s or G12t75s? I find the latter to always be too hissy no matter what, I'd only touch them for leads.
 
1960A are G12T75. When I had mine I kinda just learned to treat their general high end grit to become a part of the tone. I always find that cab, no matter the amp, tends to need a cut around 4800 - 6000hz. Jog around there and see if you can get it less harsh whilst still retaining clarity.

I always did the old dustcap meets the cone micing :)
 
today i found that a lot of the problem was the 57 and the sm7. i dug out and old Rode NTK condensor mic and it captured the dynamics of the chug and the high-highs really well. i experiemented blending them with a 57 in different ways but int he end i just kept hating what 57 was adding. At this point i'm thinking that my problem is my tone adjustment on my pickups no matter what i change the weird conk conk stays the same so I'm going to try that out tommorrow. I dont understand how these guys get the dynamics they do out of a 57, the condensor sort of....pushes back in a really great way.

yea around 4-5k def gets some dipping out, but it seems better to have too much of rather than not enough...i hated that soldano cab lol.
 
Not sure how much you're expecting in terms of dynamics from distorted guitars to be honest. Most of the time it's compressed on the way in, then multiband, then some EQ surgical or not, so dynamics are minimal.

Also, try to remember the context of the guitars, is the mic picking up a rich mid range focus? Are the lows adequate but not overbearing? The SM57 is a trusted mic purely because of it's midrange focus etc, that's why most get a good tone because the tone they dial/ aim for is in that range to begin with :)

Just food for thought
 
the midrange is naturally subdued in this mic, but i'm notching out the mids to a good degree anyway. i actually have to dip a fair amount out with this mic even. the dynamics are coming from the low end, using the more sensitive diaphram of the condensor gives it more "push". essentially i am capturing the dynamics the low end is affecting and then filtering out what isn't needed. the bass guitar is what should fill the lower frequencies for sure, but i'm not a fan of the super midrangey guitars that are en vogue right now. the 57 gives me a lot of honk and a lot of cardboard which is great for hard rock, but i am trying to replicate that old ajfa sound with a bit less low mids ala demanufacture which at this point i'm conviced was recorded with a U67 or something. I def know ajfa was an sm7 blended with a u87 for the close mics. I'm also hitting the guitars with the limiter in grancomp which seems to work pretty well to even out said dynamics if it wavers too much. the chain that is working the best so far is

digi eq-nomad factory N series mix eq-grancomp limiter section-reaxcomp (sneap setting) -digi compressor (guitars are sidechained to the kick and snare)
 
Dude, get your hands on an i5. the clarity.... it's gorgeous. Exactly why is great in conjunction AND as a substitute with a 57. Do you use like the Fredman technique?
 
gotcha, when i get some money i might check that one out. no, I tried the fredman technique, but honestly the two mic deal just seems to add to my problems. I seem to have better results dialling in one mic just right than try to phase align and blend two of em. i just read a previous post talking about low passing pretty far and then boosting whats left with a notch around 4k which sounds interesting, but i'm going to see if i can get it from the source today. I'm thinking of just tracking with the presence knob at zero for starters and rolling back my tone knob on my pickups.
 
Man, I love Marshall cab and you can get crunchy and awesome sounds out of it. Your guitar sound is too much "congested" but it's really cool for old school thrash.
I would raise the gain (5), ditch the para eq, put some mids om the amp and open the sound a little with the presence control. Don't put the mic too far from the center of the cone because you'll get some nastyness typical of the t75. I find the t75 very pleasant micing the center of the speaker and a little further, like the mic aims the junction of a v30 (t75 has a bigger dustcap)
 
You're using alot of compression/limiting in post for distorted guitars.

I'd say give the 2 mic technique another go. It's easy as anything to set them up. Leave your fav mic in the position where you like it, flip it phase and bring the next mic up to the same level as it. Sweep around till you get the nastiest, most horrible fizzy mess in your headphones and then unflip the phase of the first mic. What you're left with is the sound of the 2 mics, but the asty, horrible fizz is what gets cancelled. No need to mess around with phase/time aligning anything afterwards. Use the mics like EQ, you seem to know what the problem areas for you are so use the 2 mics to cancel them and get closer to your desired tone
 
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