New approach to guitar tones

[Sam Bottner]

I have been so focused on processing guitars with EQ to achieve a good tone, and today I soloed my guitar tracks and realized they sounded very weak (not just a little thin) so I bypassed all the EQ and realized it sounded way better with all the bass I had been cutting below 175hz. Instead of all my intricate cuts and boosts and other unnecessary shit that has slowly crept into my guitar chain, I just highpassed at 60hz and lowpassed at 8.5khz, and then a shallow 3 db cut at 2khz to make room for vocals when they come in to the song. Anyway, I thought I'd post an example of my new tone, with no bass guitar yet. Just a short clip.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7071005/new song idea.mp3

UPDATE: version with bass
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7071005/new song idea with bass.mp3

 

[Dexter_prog]

Isn't 8.5khz way too low?

 

[Sam Bottner]

Not to me. It's all preference and your style of mixing. I don't like to have fizz in my guitar tone, so it's what works for me. Also, just listen to it and decide for yourself.

 

[jimwilbourne]

Not to me. It's all preference and your style of mixing. I don't like to have fizz in my guitar tone, so it's what works for me. Also, just listen to it and decide for yourself.

ya know.. I've been fighting to urge to lowpass that low.
I felt like I was cutting too much of the tone and people would hate me for it.

thanks for giving me the courage to try it on a mix. haha

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Eek, whoomp-city dude - the resonances are insane, to the point that I can't really hear anything else Super-muffled too IMO

 

[Sam Bottner]

Eek, whoomp-city dude - the resonances are insane, to the point that I can't really hear anything else Super-muffled too IMO

Really? I felt like the palm mutes were bassy, but when I wasn't palm muting, it was pretty clear and defined. I may go up to 80 or so to make room for the kick, but I'm into this tone for the most part. Probably won't be as much when I record bass though, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

 

[Sam Bottner]

with bass https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7071005/new song idea with bass.mp3

 

[RiF]

I have no option to listen to the clip right now, but:

1. Do not tweak any track solo'd. My mixes improved dramatically after the point where I just EQ, compress, adjust reverb and whatnot with all tracks running.
2. That said, in my experience, a good solo'd guitar tone will almost never work in a mix (too much bass, too less mids, too much highs). The other way round: I will almost never like a good guitar tone in the mix when solo'd.
3. When you'll add the bass, you might want to touch that HPF-frequency knob and turn it up again ;-).

 

[jval]

didn't listen to the track but even if it's not good, your mindset is right. To me, dirty guitars almost always lose something even with just a little bit of eq. The closer to FLAT you keep it, the better it's going to sound. If you're doing tons of EQ on your guitars, something is really wrong... go back, reamp, and get it right at the source.

 

[drew_drummer]

Sam, the tone is very brittle sounding, which isn't helping the definition. What are you using for your amp tone? Sounds like a bit too much gain and not enough volume to me.

 

[Dexter_prog]

I like the tone, but there is A LOT, I repeat, A LOT of bass. It feels like my head is going to explode. I'm talking about the palm mutes in the intro mostly.

 

[Sam Bottner]

I'll mess with the gain a little, but ^do you mean too much bass in the guitars or just overall? I think it might be that I need to highpass the actual bass guitar because on the newest clip, the highpass on guitars is up to 100hz.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Hate to break it to you, but its not that its too much bass, I generally high pass guitars at 61.8 (in B tunning). What is going on is there is way too much low mids and not enough highs, both from you lowpassing too low and the fact taht you need some eq boost in the highs somewhere to give the guitars some clarity.

 

[Sam Bottner]

yeah I have that problem a lot, even when I highpass higher

 

[Sam Bottner]

Alrighty, updated it again (second link in the OP) with a cut at 200hz in the guitars and bass and lowered the gain a tad. Let me know what you think.

EDIT:
and I'm going for a tone like the one on minus the herd by ion dissonance sort of if it makes a difference in your listening

 

[Dexter_prog]

Hate to break it to you, but its not that its too much bass, I generally high pass guitars at 61.8 (in B tunning).

That's interesting, I was high-passing my B-tuning guitars at 80 (though I know close to shit concerning production )

 

[Sam Bottner]

^its not like a rule or anything. It depends on the music, the DIs, and most of all, what you want the mix to sound like. If you like to hp at 80, go for it.

 

[Dexter_prog]

Yeah, but I was always curious if one was supposed to HP according to the tuning of the guitar

 

[Sam Bottner]

Some people say that, I really don't think it makes a huge difference though.

 

[derfbonker]

I know that i don't like to hp above the second harmonic.