eq on the track or on the bus?

[melovine]

If i have 4 guitars going to the Bus is it best to do all of the surgical cuts in the bus one time? or better to individually eq each guitar track? same question for compression as well.

 

[Skinny Viking]

depends if you want the same EQ applied to all 4 guitars. If you're quad-tracking with a couple different amps they'll probably require differing EQ setups. If you used the same amp for all 4 you still may want to EQ the 2 sides a bit different to give a wider stereo image. You can save the bus / group global EQ for more musical, overall changes like "damn, all my gats is dull, needz moar edgez"

 

[melovine]

thanks ill try out EQing them individually,

thats the issue I'm having right now is that the guitars aren't filling up the spectrum like i would like them to, but when i boost them it seems to sit on the vocals. I've cut them around 3k to try and make a hole for the vocals, but it seems to sterilize my guitars :/

 

[smy1]

melovine: try this method: solo the vocals and the guitar bus so that only those two instruments are playing. Then set an EQ on the guitars to cut 5-7db with a medium Q of 0,8-1. Sweep this slowly while listening to the VOCALS (yes, you sweep the guitar EQ while listening to the vocals!). That way you'll quickly find a frequency that makes the vocals cut through much better. And very often it's not a typical vocal frequency like 3k.