How do you choose the right guitar sound?

[::XeS::]

As the title says...
Do you choose it listening the sound though your monitors while the guitarist plays something?
For me it's very difficult to judge a guitar sound in mono because the sound could be very different in stereo.
Often a mono guitar track sounds like shit but in stereo could be awesome...
What do you usually do?

 

[JMarz]

I fire up the fitty, plug it into the computer, and record

bam. good tone

 

[fabz]

I normally record 2 tracks to check if it works. sometimes i call up the bassist to lay down track. Most of the time it works...

 

[Lasse Lammert]

I reamp a quatracked riff through all my amps with pretty standard settings.
then I listen (blind) to the first set of guits which will be my main guitars....pick the one I like the best and then listen to that combined with all the possibilities for the 3rd+4th track.
that way I find the combination of amps I wanna use. (just picking by the character of the amp since I haven't tweaked the knobs by then).
after that I do the amp tweaking and reamp all the tracks/songs

 

[Metaltastic]

Including the Powerball Lasse?

 

[Torniojaws]

Including the Powerball Lasse?

Didn't he sell it a while back?

 

[Ermz]

Usually involves a lot of back and forth, assuming that we've already chosen which amp. It's first about finding which speaker sounds best by quickly mic'ing the two top ones. After finding the one which is best comes the mic tweaking. After a suitable starting tone is found I'll bring in a second mic and see if I can add anything extra and subtract what's unwanted (via phase cancellation). I prefer using more than 1 mic in order to get greater tonal shaping possibilities without EQ. But if we're quad-tracking I will usually opt to only use 1 mic since the difference between the amps will in the end smooth each other out (ideally).

But yeah I usually get the guitarist to double track something with a tone before comitting to it. It's important to hear the tone in context of the (rough) mix. By itself it doesn't mean much.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Including the Powerball Lasse?

actually...as long as I had it yes.
and if a band brings it in I still do it (and let them set it up themselves so they can't complain "yeah, you set it up so it sounds shitty").

I just love to see their faces after telling them what they kicked out first in that blindtest

 

[Metaltastic]

Hahaha, yup, bringing people crashing down to reality one band at a time

 

[::XeS::]

I think I'll use the reamp too. Playing and tweak in real time is not that good

 

[FIXXXER]

i'm using an axe-fx to record guitars direct.
when i create a patch i always do some "prerecording" to check if the sound works.

 

[HeadCrusher]

I reamp a quatracked riff through all my amps with pretty standard settings.
then I listen (blind) to the first set of guits which will be my main guitars....pick the one I like the best and then listen to that combined with all the possibilities for the 3rd+4th track.
that way I find the combination of amps I wanna use. (just picking by the character of the amp since I haven't tweaked the knobs by then).
after that I do the amp tweaking and reamp all the tracks/songs

wow! :zombie: sounds like a good idea but also like an awful lot of work.

 

[Mikaël-ange]

I reamp a quatracked riff through all my amps with pretty standard settings.
then I listen (blind) to the first set of guits which will be my main guitars....pick the one I like the best and then listen to that combined with all the possibilities for the 3rd+4th track.
that way I find the combination of amps I wanna use. (just picking by the character of the amp since I haven't tweaked the knobs by then).
after that I do the amp tweaking and reamp all the tracks/songs

Usually involves a lot of back and forth, assuming that we've already chosen which amp. It's first about finding which speaker sounds best by quickly mic'ing the two top ones. After finding the one which is best comes the mic tweaking. After a suitable starting tone is found I'll bring in a second mic and see if I can add anything extra and subtract what's unwanted (via phase cancellation). I prefer using more than 1 mic in order to get greater tonal shaping possibilities without EQ. But if we're quad-tracking I will usually opt to only use 1 mic since the difference between the amps will in the end smooth each other out (ideally).

But yeah I usually get the guitarist to double track something with a tone before comitting to it. It's important to hear the tone in context of the (rough) mix. By itself it doesn't mean much.

Thanks a lot for this advices

But just for personnal/steal trick curiosity lol how do you deal with this Marcus?

 

[Metaltastic]

Who, me? Well, I only have one amp so it's not too hard to pick a tone I like! And I usually keep it around the same settings, I've never really believed an amp can have more than one good sound (unless it's a multi-channel amp and the channels are SERIOUSLY different from each other)

 

[Mikaël-ange]

Who, me? Well, I only have one amp so it's not too hard to pick a tone I like! And I usually keep it around the same settings, I've never really believed an amp can have more than one good sound (unless it's a multi-channel amp and the channels are SERIOUSLY different from each other)

But your recto tone are like good wine imo
Always better than I hear before

 

[Pablo333]

I know your talking about tracking, but this is the reason i love PODFARM so much - i record riffs (double track) and then go back to them a few days later and try out different cabs/preamps etc along with maybe impulses and curve eq - ultimate flexibility.

 

[Metaltastic]

But your recto tone are like good wine imo
Always better than I hear before

Haha, thanks a lot dude! I guess it would be more appropriate to say all that time I was still searching for that one perfect sound, but now I think I've found it!

 

[The Unavoidable]

Set a basic setting for what I think will fit the project, and go from there. Do some test mixes, and see what happens. I'm pretty laid back about all that stuff.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

actually...as long as I had it yes.
and if a band brings it in I still do it (and let them set it up themselves so they can't complain "yeah, you set it up so it sounds shitty").

I just love to see their faces after telling them what they kicked out first in that blindtest

I don't trust blind tests because bands usually will want to hear their guitars overly distorted and scooped. Guitar may sound better on its own that way but we all know that's not the case when it comes to fitting in with the whole mix.

 

[Matt-Steele]

Record something and post it in the "rate my tone" section. Then you'll have a hundred different opinions telling you how your guitar tone should sound, and they'll all be different.

Do yourself a favor and work on your tone until you're happy with it.