yer dude, i have both a 4x12 and a 2x12, both raised from the floor, and to be honest, in both instances, it hasn't made much difference it being raised or flat on the floor!
Guitar tones.. give up?
- Thread starter MetalJonesy
- Start date
see i have everything else balanced really well, and the guitars are balanced well too, but by them selves (say on a break) i feel they sound like shit (i am being slightly over critical here though lol)!. perhaps just my view on my own stuff i guess and wanting it to sound like something else, that perhaps doesn't suit the style im recording!
is it just raised, or actually decoupled?
decoupling is where you actually isolate the vibrations between the cab and the floor. of course nothing is going to be 100% on this, but i like setting cabs on a piece of 2" extruded foam insulation, aka pinkboard
ahh its not exactly like that, with the 4x12its castors and the 2x12 is on a table.
Gnna have some raw clips up later. The band im reamping wants Mid focused guitars, so ill do an unprocessed and processed version. See if theres anything in the unprocessed tone that sticks out thats an obvious mistake!
Gnna have some raw clips up later. The band im reamping wants Mid focused guitars, so ill do an unprocessed and processed version. See if theres anything in the unprocessed tone that sticks out thats an obvious mistake!
Ermz
¯\(°_o)/¯
Lately I've been having more luck with tube amp-to-impulse tones that I do here.
Last one I mixed was this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Cecile-18.mp3
Mind you the leads were done courtesy of Jeff via real amp and cab.
Ryan really saved my arse many a time with that glorious Pres8 impulse.
Last one I mixed was this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Cecile-18.mp3
Mind you the leads were done courtesy of Jeff via real amp and cab.
Ryan really saved my arse many a time with that glorious Pres8 impulse.
Harry Hughes
âââ¬â¬
- Apr 25, 2009
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Wouldn't any band want mid focused guitars?
Pretty sure I wouldn't want bass or treble focused guitars lol
RiF
Member
1. I feel ya! I am always disappointed with my tones 
. The amp/cab sounds great in the room, but when miced... bah! Either too brittle, too bassy, too middy, you name it. When going to 2 mics, hell breaks loose because I now have a gazillion of options...
2. Don't judge the tone on a solo'd guitar track. Judge it in the mix. Did you? The band liked the tone (and they got a full mix from you, didn't they?).
3. Do you have a reference tone to compare yours to? My ears get tired pretty soon - especially when micing guitars at insane volumes - and I loose my ability to tell if it's gotten better or worse.
4. I finally gave up trying to get the perfect tone without an EQ. Unless I need to boost or cut more than 2-3 dB, I am in my target corridor. If it sounds good, it is good.
. The amp/cab sounds great in the room, but when miced... bah! Either too brittle, too bassy, too middy, you name it. When going to 2 mics, hell breaks loose because I now have a gazillion of options...2. Don't judge the tone on a solo'd guitar track. Judge it in the mix. Did you? The band liked the tone (and they got a full mix from you, didn't they?).
3. Do you have a reference tone to compare yours to? My ears get tired pretty soon - especially when micing guitars at insane volumes - and I loose my ability to tell if it's gotten better or worse.
4. I finally gave up trying to get the perfect tone without an EQ. Unless I need to boost or cut more than 2-3 dB, I am in my target corridor. If it sounds good, it is good
.
darthjujuu
Member
gotta learn the fredmanz bro, 6505 + v30s = fizz, fredmans = cancels that fizz in the most satisfying of ways.
MarcusGHedwig
Member
Well I'll definitely agree that there can of course be too much fizz that indeed does negatively affect the whole mix, but do you really feel that the guitars on my EP (recorded with the mic pretty close to the cap on the bottom speaker, with no cuts between 2k and the LP at ~10k) "destroy the entire mix?" I mean, I know it's by no means an amazing mix - looking back, the big things that stand out to me are cymbal programming and processing, too much of the S2.0 snare 1176 track mixed in (hence the snare sounding too boxy and sampled) and too much low-mids/not enough high-mids from the 18v EMG, but while I can see how it would be more fizz than you personally would like, I honestly have never felt it detracted from the mix to the degree you're saying (I bring that specific example up because that's the degree of fizz that I was referring to that I think can be sufficiently masked). Really not trying to start something here, as this has of course been a contentious topic between us in the past, but I'm just curious if you really feel it's that bad.
Ermz
¯\(°_o)/¯
Hey Marcus, totally with you on the whole not wanting to get into that debate thing. But to answer your question, yeah I definitely do feel it's that bad. If i didn't I wouldn't be so vocal about it all the time. I've spent so so so many thousands of hours in this space I've created just for the purpose of monitoring to hear these things, to hear those microscopic elements that separate truly great from productions from just standard 'good' or 'average' ones. One thing I keep coming back to is that guitars with overly resonant or peaky high mid or high frequency content tend to detrimentally affect mixes. It is a personal opinion at its heart, I guess, but it's backed up with incessant listening and comparison on my end. Everyone is of course free to take it or leave it, but for the moment I'm resolute and fixed in that frame of mind.
If you took me up on that stem mastering offer a while back it would've perhaps been more illuminating to hear what I'm talking about embodied as proof right in front of you.
If you took me up on that stem mastering offer a while back it would've perhaps been more illuminating to hear what I'm talking about embodied as proof right in front of you.
MarcusGHedwig
Member
Holy shit dude! That sounds fucking AWESOME. PM me some details? =D Or post 'em here. IDK if you've been over it before, if you have, pardon me asking!
darthjujuu
Member
Ermz
¯\(°_o)/¯
What details did you want Jonesy?
There's a fair bit of post-processing, though actually less than I've had to use with a lot of mic'ed tones lately. There are like two instances of eQuality, an ssl bus comp (randy settings), an l1 eating up the left-over dynamics, a c4 (of course), PSP MixSaturator, and an instance of Curve EQ that I originally set to match to Killswitch guitars, though I'd since modified the curve so it's barely recognizable. There's like 7-8 plug-ins on the rhythm guitar bus, which is actually quite good for me. The EoTE album got 16 (had to create another group track and route to it for more).
The great thing about Ryan's impulse is that he fluked possibly the best mic position on the face of the planet. It has literally the least amount of junk I've ever heard from a cab (for high-gain). So the amount of tweaking you need to do isn't as great as you may think. Half the battle is in building a mix around the tone that will seat it in a way that works. The biggest regret is that impulses themselves suck so much as a technology. They really weren't conceived for this purpose, yet not a single person seems ambitious enough to expand on them and actually give us some dynamic behavior from the cab (which, let's face it, is where that final 15% of tone lies).
Anyway, I updated that clip, made the lead guitars less annoying in the mids: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Cecile-20.mp3
There's a fair bit of post-processing, though actually less than I've had to use with a lot of mic'ed tones lately. There are like two instances of eQuality, an ssl bus comp (randy settings), an l1 eating up the left-over dynamics, a c4 (of course), PSP MixSaturator, and an instance of Curve EQ that I originally set to match to Killswitch guitars, though I'd since modified the curve so it's barely recognizable. There's like 7-8 plug-ins on the rhythm guitar bus, which is actually quite good for me. The EoTE album got 16 (had to create another group track and route to it for more).
The great thing about Ryan's impulse is that he fluked possibly the best mic position on the face of the planet. It has literally the least amount of junk I've ever heard from a cab (for high-gain). So the amount of tweaking you need to do isn't as great as you may think. Half the battle is in building a mix around the tone that will seat it in a way that works. The biggest regret is that impulses themselves suck so much as a technology. They really weren't conceived for this purpose, yet not a single person seems ambitious enough to expand on them and actually give us some dynamic behavior from the cab (which, let's face it, is where that final 15% of tone lies).
Anyway, I updated that clip, made the lead guitars less annoying in the mids: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Cecile-20.mp3
tempe
Captain Midnight
Ermin i'm glad i'm not the only one using a shit load of plugs on the guitar buss!! However, saying this, i have just gone back to my reamps and done a very basic EQ (three stages) the first to boost the highs, the second to do the HP/LP cuts, then the third is there to notch out the nuisance frequencies, followed by the C4 and limiter, and this seems to sound better than my very detailled eqing before hand! i'll let my ears rest tonight and bounce down a before and after version (i can only do a snippet as its for an upcoming EP and i don't want to reveal too much!
imho, over-eq'ing guitars is the enemy. having that said, i still struggle with guitars most, since it's imho the hardest instrument to track the right way (amps not di mind you) like others already pointed out.
the thing about extensive eq'ing is that in the end, all you're doing is fucking with the phase. i try to get the reamped, un-eq'ed tone as close to what i want as possible so i don't have to eq as much. tbh i'd rather build the mix around the guitar tone and/or reamp again than eqing guitars too much.
i still wonder how andy get's those kickass guitar sounds. must be a mixture of great amp tweaking, great cabs, great preamps, and a great tracking room. i guess.
the thing about extensive eq'ing is that in the end, all you're doing is fucking with the phase. i try to get the reamped, un-eq'ed tone as close to what i want as possible so i don't have to eq as much. tbh i'd rather build the mix around the guitar tone and/or reamp again than eqing guitars too much.
i still wonder how andy get's those kickass guitar sounds. must be a mixture of great amp tweaking, great cabs, great preamps, and a great tracking room. i guess.
darthjujuu
Member
i never really knew the definition of parametric vs. paragraphic, etc., so which EQ's are you guys using on your guitar busses?? reaEq has always done the job alright for me. usually just one instance, HP/LP to taste, and a few shelves/cuts if i feel it necessary, which i've been doing moreso lately than before.
