EQ Tips for Rhythm Guitar

[jani78]

I'd like to get some general eq tips for recording rhyhtm guitar. My gear:

- Jackson guitar with Seymour Duncan JB
- ENGL Savage head
- Marshall 1960AV Vintage cab with V30 elements
- MXR Gate
- Boss SD-1 (modded)

Thanks.

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

If we're talking about EQ'ing in the mix, the best tips I've picked up over the years:
-The mix is what's important: if you solo your rhythm track, it may sound very strange indeed, after EQ is applied, when compared to the signal you recorded. You may have cut a lot of lows, giving it a "thin" sound, but a good bass track will fill that gap. As long as it fits in the mix, it's good. Don't sweat solo'd tracks.
-Cutting is preferable to boosting. If you want more low end, shelve the high end a bit rather than boosting the lows, and vice-versa. Also, cuts should (usually) be narrow; boosts should (usually) be broad.
-Problem frequencies can be isolated by boosting a particular band quite a bit, with a very narrow Q-width, and sweeping through the frequency range. When you find a spot where an undesirable frequency jumps right out at you, cut there a bit. 4k-8k often contains some problem areas with my particular setup, but of course yours is likely different.
-Always use the best EQ you can afford. Sounds like a no-brainer, but at times I've felt that a high-pass filter is just a high-pass filter; why use something fancy there? When you get your hands on a nice EQ, though, you'll know the difference can be massive.
-Presets should be avoided. Start from scratch. Even with the same guitar setup with the same singer and the same kit, a preset you've used in one track may not work in another; different songs have different focus points. Often the best way to bring something like the vocals out front a little more means attenuating additional freqs in the guitar, rather than reaching for the fader.
These are all pretty general; hopefully some other folks can chime in and offer some deeper and more involved tips!

 

[Razorjack]

I tend to not EQ guitars in a mix, I just use the C4 to compress the low-mids using Andy's preset as a starting point. If the guitars are recorded right I find that they sit well in the mix without too much treatment. The less processing the better.

 

[jani78]

I tend to not EQ guitars in a mix, I just use the C4 to compress the low-mids using Andy's preset as a starting point. If the guitars are recorded right I find that they sit well in the mix without too much treatment. The less processing the better.

Andy's preset?

 

[Razorjack]

Andy's Waves C4 guitar preset. See the 'C4' thread for a link.

 

[Shredfiend]

For myself, on my VHT I don't cut out any mids at all....none on the mid control, and none on the graphic EQ. I and highs......but don't go overboard, and I keep keep myself from boosting the low end a bunch. It's really easy to get carried away with the lowend, but when you mix it with bass guitar and double bass the whole mix can turn muddy fast.

I also try to get the best sound I can with the initial recording, doing as much tweaking on the amp rather than a lot of EQing in the mix.

 

[marcust]

i roll-off high frequencies and maybe even add mids if they don't cut through enough
and i use the c4 setting (the patented sneap setting

 

[Exsanguis]

I'll do some hi and low passing to clean everything up, maybe a little tweaking in the hi-mids to bring out a little extra bite, if needed, and some subtractive eq in the low mids(not too much, if any). I never do the same thing exactly the same way twice, so I don't have a consistent process, but I do find myself hipassing up to 90 or 100hz, then giving a little nudge around 100 to 110 to bring back any body that was cut out when hipassing. I'll then take a lowpass filter and sweep it back and forth till I get to the point where I get rid of the nasty fizz, and a little bit of the good part of the guitar sound, then I'll drag the lowpass back a little to let in some of that fizz and the good part(sounds stupid and obvious, but it took me a while to get this down well). Also, I like working with many different guitar tracks, so if this time I have tons of tracks of guitars, I'll find one track that I like the body of, another one with tons of bite, and another one for punchiness, as well as others for any other vague sound-related adjective one can think of, and tweak and combine them to get one solid sound. May sound convoluted and harder than necessary, but I've gotten(what I consider to be) good results with this process, as well as the "use the track without eq, with some C4 on there to clean it up, but that's it" method, though I'm not a fan of multiband compression at all.