Fed up with weak guitar tones!!!!

V

veronicafalls

Member
Mar 26, 2009
158
0
16
Puyallup, Washington
Hello,

I've been doing recording as a hobby for the past 6 months and want to become an active musician after graduating High School have been fed up with weak guitar tones, so far I have spent lots of money searching for at least a decent guitar tone for emocore/post-hardcore the scene kid stuff you know. :cry: lol But with a twist of mathcore in it.

First I have tried vst's like guitar rig (which sucks) and pod farm (wasn't too bad actually). Then I went into micing amps using AKG Perception 220 (better with vocals than guitar), then the shure sm57 (weak). Then I went towards pro amps such as the behringer V-amp pro (weak as hell) then to the line6 pod pro xt (not too bad, but still need more power). And I have quad tracked and used impulses, and I still haven't gotten any good results.

I am looking towards any new power amp if that helps with direct recording or if I need a new interface or new rig in general.
CAN SOMEBODY HELP PLEASE!!!

Basically I want to start using stuff that is physically in front of me and not VST/RTAS or whatever. I kind of want to use vst for only some equalizing. And want to have more physical and not digital access to other things say if a power amp helps define tone in a home (wanna be professional) recording studio setting.

My Gear As Of Now:

Pod XT Pro
Pod Farm
M-Audio Fasttrack Pro 2 inputs
FL studio
Ibanez RG3 guitar
ISP decimator


Thank you to anyone that can help because I am a n00bzore.:cry:
I am a noob and in frustration like f-ing crazy.:kickass:
 
Currently I am looking towards getting A power amp and/or new mixer. Cause I was super cheap at first, I have a small 2 track interface.

Can anyone give me some tips and pointers about how to get a strong defined sound w/o quadtracking, because my tone and power chords get lost in double or quad tracking, no matter how much eq'ing I do for some reason.
 
Welcome to the forums.

I think your post is a bit vague, please be more specific on:
- What amp did you use?
- What was the signal chain?
- What cabinet, what elements?
- How did you mic it?
- How loud was the amp?
- What pickups does the guitar have?
- Describle how was the guitartone was weak? What was wrong with it? Clips?

Some solutions:
- 80% of the tone comes from the hands. Fix the problems as early as possible, not in the mix. Make the amp itself sound good.
- did you know you should buy a bassguitar? It usually makes 70% of the balls to the tone, and not the guitar.
- start the tone from scratch. Reset all the knobs to zero, bring up the volume so that you get the just the clean signal thru and start tweaking from there. Remember: distortion stacks up, so don't use it too much.
 
ahjteam said:
Welcome to the forums.

I think your post is a bit vague, please be more specific on
- What amp did you use?
- What was the signal chain?
- What cabinet, what elements?
- How did you mic it?
- How loud was the amp?
- What pickups does the guitar have?
- Describle how was the guitartone was weak? What was wrong with it? Clips?

- 80% of the tone comes from the hands. Fix the problems as early as possible, not in the mix. Make the amp itself sound good.
- did you know you should buy a bassguitar? It usually makes 70% of the balls to the tone, and not the guitar.
Click to expand...

Back when I was micing, I used a 15 watt johnson (POS) amp with no cabs with a johnson strat with el cheapo three coil pickups using a boss metalcore pedal, and using a shure sm57 to mic in various spots around the amp. The amp was kind of loud. The mic went into the M-audio fasttrack and into FL studio, in which it sounded hollow and no prescence, so I quad tracked and I got a raunchy not so sharp and defined sound. even trying the fl compressor, nothing was right.

Then now I use a pod xt pro with an Ibanez RG3 with 2 IBZ V8 humbucker pickups (which sound grand in my friends marshall halfstack). Basically the guitar goes through the pod xt pro and has compression and eq from one of Joey Sturgis' posts with a tube screamer with light gain and lots of tone. And I keep bass/treble/and middle at 50% and prescence at 100% and drive from 40-80%(depends). And connected to FL studio via usb from pod and no matter what eq I try to mess with, it still sounds weak, and when I quad track, it sounds raunchy again with no definition of notes. I even had a friend play and try it out and it sounded the same.

I work hard on researching frequencies of different instruments and how they act. Joey Sturgis is my inspiration to try to experiment. But I'm not trying to be him or sound like him, I'm trying to find the right tone in my head which I haven't found yet.

BTW I use a Fender P-Bass in all of my songs, which sounds amazing.
 
You should be able to do well with the XT pro. A lot of the time its the cabinet simulation that kills you. Try to get Voxengo Boogex (free) to load good impulses and turn the cabinet sims off on the Pod XT Pro and run it through there.

Quad tracking isn't usually necessary, but good playing and a good tone is.
 
lolzgreg said:
You should be able to do well with the XT pro. A lot of the time its the cabinet simulation that kills you. Try to get Voxengo Boogex (free) to load good impulses and turn the cabinet sims off on the Pod XT Pro and run it through there.

Quad tracking isn't usually necessary, but good playing and a good tone is.
Click to expand...

hmm. I might try that sometime, even though I've never had luck with impulses Thanks!!!
 
A power amp isn't going to do anything to increase the edge. Youa re looking for tone from the wrong places. For starters, not be be mean but the amp side of gear you have been using shit gear. Guitar Rig, V-Amp, Pod farm. Modelers are just gross imo. They are great if you want to put scratch tracks down, but you don't get the real tone without having a real amp, a real tube amp that sounds good without distortion pedals. Sure you can can get great results from a POD XT direct if you are using impulses, but you will notice a plastic like guitar tone.

Call me old school but my best advice is get a real tube head and a good cabinet to record with. Stop using FL Studio to record, that is not what it is for. If you are going to be cheap on a DAW then download Reaper, which is free. A 57 if mic'd correctly with a good amp will sounds great, a good indicator that your amp is shit is if it sounds really bad after you have mic'd it with a 57 (been there done that with my spider II, but then god-like tone doing nothing different with a 5150). Still i would recommend to stay away from dynamic mics and get a condenser. Side address condensers are harder to get a good mic position than say a pencil styled mic, but any condenser will give you a wamer fatter tone.

With guitars you want to at least dual track, if you are loosing clarity from dual tracking, you are using way too much gain or you are playing extremely sloppy. I like to quad track, but i use guitars 3 and 4 as a supplement. I get the guitar two guitar volumes where I like them and then slowly bring up guitars 3 and 4 until I have the meat that I want. If you hear guitars 3 and 4 they are too loud. They are a subtlety to the music, not a core ingredient.

My recommendation:

-Use a real TS, doesn't matter if its a boss, maxxon, MXR, Ibanez etc, keep the gain all the way down and the tone knob wherer you like it (the more you turn it up, the tighter and cranchier the sound will be, the lower it is, the looser and muddier the tone
-Use a real amp, a real cabinet and a decent condenser mic
-Use a moderate amount of gain, you can use a lot, just make sure its not taking away the clarity of your mix
-Get a real DAW
-Play tighter, with decent gutiar that has something better than stock pups, with new strings

keep it old school, keep it simple. Get the tone to sound good before you record that rather trying to fix it later, you cannot polish a turd. Keep the eq minimal and be sure to roll off some of the over the top highs. And don;t judge the guitar tone until its in a whole mix that has a good bass tone that blends in real well.

and for the love of god stop using compression on gutiars, thats a dynamic killer and clarity killer right there, besides hi gain tones are already compressed to high hell by nature. And stop using presets like eq and compression on the software side of things. Get your own tone, start from scratch and keep a minimalist approach. You will thank me later for it.
 
I am kinda with Winter Snow on this one, the problem has been shitty gear.

If you insist going with hardware, then I suggest that you get atleast a physical tubescreamer (eg. Ibanez TS7, Digitech Bad Monkey...), a 2x12 or 4x12 with preferrably Celestion V30 elements (eg. Framus FR212CB) and a higain tubeamp (eg. Peavey, Mesa, Krank, Engl, Marshall, Bugera, Bogner, Rivera, VHT, Hiwatt...)

And you must remember that when it comes to physical gear, with a dollar you get a one-dollar-sound, with five dollars you get a five-dollar-sound, so don't buy cheap shit.
 
I agree on most issues you guys adress, although I like using impulses with a real amp more than actually micing up the cab.

(sorry for hijacking :) )
But maybe thats the case because I'm using the wrong mic. I have a decent cab and a decent room, but the recorded sound is still lacking the clarity that I achieve with an impulse. I'm using a SM57 and a MD421

What would a decent condenser mic be?! And how would it change my sound?!

Thanks
 
Calling the sm57 'weak', are we? Tell that to the pro's using _only_ SM57's for guitar micing... I would say that's not the problem with your chain.

I would suggest you post one or more DI's of your guitar. Maybe there's something wrong with the first part - the guitar or the playing.
 
veronicafalls said:
Hello,

I've been doing recording as a hobby for the past 6 months and want to become an active musician after graduating High School have been fed up with weak guitar tones, so far I have spent lots of money searching for at least a decent guitar tone for emocore/post-hardcore the scene kid stuff you know. :cry: lol But with a twist of mathcore in it.

First I have tried vst's like guitar rig (which sucks) and pod farm (wasn't too bad actually). Then I went into micing amps using AKG Perception 220 (better with vocals than guitar), then the shure sm57 (weak). Then I went towards pro amps such as the behringer V-amp pro (weak as hell) then to the line6 pod pro xt (not too bad, but still need more power). And I have quad tracked and used impulses, and I still haven't gotten any good results.

I am looking towards any new power amp if that helps with direct recording or if I need a new interface or new rig in general.
CAN SOMEBODY HELP PLEASE!!!

Basically I want to start using stuff that is physically in front of me and not VST/RTAS or whatever. I kind of want to use vst for only some equalizing. And want to have more physical and not digital access to other things say if a power amp helps define tone in a home (wanna be professional) recording studio setting.

My Gear As Of Now:

Pod XT Pro
Pod Farm
M-Audio Fasttrack Pro 2 inputs
FL studio
Ibanez RG3 guitar
ISP decimator


Thank you to anyone that can help because I am a n00bzore.:cry:
I am a noob and in frustration like f-ing crazy.:kickass:
Click to expand...

lolcat_what.jpg


Step1 - Peavey 5150 or 2 CH Dual Rec
Step2 - Solid V30 Cabinet
Step3 - SM 57
Step4 - Preamp/DAW
Step5 - Win @ Tone.
 
Yeah it's pretty straight forward here.... he's using shit gear and expects amazing results. Welcome to the delusional preconceived ideas about "studio magic" :lol:

And, to the OP, if you are getting "(weak)" sounds using a single SM57 then you are doing it wrong. Period. Tons of engineers have used a single SM57 on a cabinet over the last couple of decades to get stellar guitar sounds. It's not the mic that is the problem ;)
 
Urmm having read this thread it isn't too clear, a bit of a tidal wave of responses.....

so i'm gonna add to it :p


but seriously, the podxt pro can get very good results. If you're playing is tight, your guitar doesn't suck too much and you turn the cab modelling off (replacing this with impulses in your DAW, there are many good ones available on this forum) then you should be able to get a good sound WITH LOTS OF TWEAKING

I think everyone here will agree that it can be done, obv. it's not as good as a dual rec into mesa OS with V30s etc etc etc but it CAN be done
 
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