Nooby who just discovered UM and the world of ampsims!

[Biggieholla]

Hey everyone. I have just stumbled upon your guys' nice little forum here and wow is there a lot of amazing information I never knew existed. I have been struggling for years trying to get a decent tone out of my direct guitar..and now I am slightly learning. I have been following several of the forum celebrities here like Dandelium and exzem and have been blown away with what you can do with well..free programs. My forum surfing led me to picking up the tse x30 and catharsis impulses. From what I have heard from other peoples songs this is a good way to start. However, I can get good tone but not great tone. It doesn't sound fat and "chuggy" like those beautifully mastered songs on here. I guess my question is about my setup. I am running an ESP kh-602 with emg 85/81's into the preamp of my soundcard (which happens to have an instrument slot). I am then setting up my signal chain in cubase starting with tse x30>keFIR>s preshigh>gate(for the awful noise). As far as eq'ing goes I dont know any good programs or good ways to go about it. I know you are supposed to double track mono with hard pans left and right, but I feel my tone is being lost because of my lack of knowledge in effects such as eq's, compressors, reverbs and just general mastering. So far does what I have been saying interms of set up/equipment sound right? What advice can anybody give me to really get a professional sound out of my guitars. I have the resources, just not the knowledge yet! Thank you for whoever has gotten this far into reading

 

[ForgotenWarrior6]

Half of your guitar tone is always the bass guitar.

Theres no real trick to it. Mixing is just the most elaborate game of EQ tetris you will ever play.

I usually cut all guitar frequencies under 125 and above 18k on guitar. Just use the EQ in cubase and it should be fine.

Mastering though, that's a completely different game. Try to get good mixes first before you even start looking into "how to master"

Hoped this helped!

 

[ahjteam]

with Erik (Dandelium) the bass guitar is 60% of the guitar tone and 90% of the whole tone is in the tight playing and songwriting.

try this instead:

gate -> bte tss -> tse x30 -> kefir -> highpass filter at 100hz, lowpass filter at 10khz

Gate as first because that way it is more effective. The EQ filters make very little effect to the sound, but they clean up the excess rumble and fizz garbage that clutters up your mix and you don't want those there to eat your headroom. The TSS is to tame the low end rumble, just use the default settings except put drive to zero, and if you want, you can try to adjust the tone to taste.

 

[Biggieholla]

thanks for the good input! So the reason my guitar doesnt sound amazing is because oh the lack of bass? I feel that's exactly what is missing is the lowend. What do people generally record bass with on this site? direct in through the same ampsim/impulse set up? or do you need specific bass sims and impulses?

 

[darthjujuu]

there are a STAGGERING number of "how do mix bass?" threads, all full of excellent info. and what's your sound card??

 

[ahjteam]

 

[darthjujuu]

gahahaha anssi i've seen you post that video so many times and i regret that i am just now watching it. perfect.

 

[Robert W]

@Bigbieholla: Apparently, some of the best things in life are free.

TSE 808 Tube screamer sim,
http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11977&start=0

Ignite Amps NRR1
http://www.igniteamps.com/audioplugi...nrr1_1_0_0.zip

I tried a couple of TS sims, and the TSE sounds the best to me. As for the Ignite Amp sim, I found it to be, by far, the best free amp sim I've used yet. Haven't tried the Catharsis IRs yet myself, but if you're looking for some good ones, you might want to try the ReCabinet stuff. It's not free, $18 I think, but do get a lot of good cab/mic combos for the money.

As for guitar tones, some things I've found useful,

High pass @100/ Low pass @ between 8K-12K. If you're downtuning, B standard or below, I've found that setting the low pass higher helps keeping the tone from getting too muddy sounding.

Compressors: I use two in my chain. One set at 5.7K-6.5K to get rid of unwanted fizz/fuzz, and the other at 250-350.

EQ:Board member Guitarguru777 posted a VERY good EQ chart in the Production Tips section in the 80s metal thread. I'd highly recommend you take a look at that. Myself, I look to boost a little at 200ish, 1K-1.2K, and 7K-8K. I'm tuned to A standard most of the time, so these setting reflect that. Usually, guitar tones in E standard seem to benefit a little from boosts around 400, 800, 1.5K, and 3K.