Pinch harmonics puzzle...

[ExecutiveRob]

Hi, this is my first post so any help would be most appreciated!

I'm having problems controlling the volume of pinch harmonics played by one of the guitarists of the band I'm currently recording.

The volume on certain pinches appears to be much louder than others to the point where the tone can be quite painful to listen to when it's cranked. It doesn't happen on all the pinches he does and it's not always the same note. Sounds like his pickups are too responsive on certain frequencies but I didn't pick up on this during tracking.

I've tried EQ'ing the worst offending note out with a high Q bell curve and it helps a little without destroying the tone but it still needs pushing back more. I'm not too keen on compressing further as I'm fairly happy with how the guitars sound for the rest of the tune.

The only idea I have left now is to automate the volume and reduced it to a comfortable level when the harsh pinches occur, but that seems like a rather brutal way of approaching it - plus it'll take aaaaaages!!!

Anyone else had this problem before or have any suggestions?

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Manually lower the volume of the pinched parts... sorry but that's the best way to make it sound good, and it's not sooooo long to do really.

 

[Aaron Smith]

Yeah, unless he does squeals about every two seconds, automating the volume won't take as long as you think. Then of course you could actually get rid of that high Q EQing on it.

 

[colonel kurtz]

ditto what these guys said...you said yourself that it's only on SOME of the squeals...even if you have to automate 30-40 of them, it still won't take as long as you may think

 

[ExecutiveRob]

Thought that was gonna be the response! There are quite a lot of pinches in each tune actually, but I understand it'll sound better if I turn the bad squeals down.

Many thanks for the advice!

 

[deadly_sinn]

what if you used some mulitband compression on the frequencies that are peaking?..just a thought..could save you having to manually drop the volume for each one and might sound more natural..

 

[colonel kurtz]

i almost said the same thing myself, but when it comes down to it, he'd probably only want the multiband working when those squeals kick in...which would leave you automating a compressor for every shitty squeal in place of automating the volume

 

[deadly_sinn]

from what it sounds like, it is prolly just one frequency range on the guitar that is causing trouble...i got a question tho, is he using headphone to double check, since i have heard of peoples booths sometimes have odd standing waves and shit...anyways back to my suggestion..do a med q frequency sweep, find the offender and then just comp it a bit with a multiband..in theory it shounldnt effect anything else, just evening out the tones...maybee he should post an example

 

[ExecutiveRob]

Yeah man, checked on headphones and other speaker systems too see if the problem translated across before trying to fix things...

The pinches are all roughly around the same frequency range. To be honest his technique wasn't so good - all pinches on the same string, same fret, same harmonic over the pickups - but it's equally my fault for not hearing them jump out during tracking!

The mulitband approach sounds interesting but I've already had pleasing results with automating the faders. Just have to be more cautious in future I guess. Cheers for the ideas though!