Removing all the bass from a guitar tone?

[Branden Giraudy]

Quick question:

Do you have to remove all the bass from the guitar in order to have a clean crisp/decent sounding amp sound?

 

[Harry Hughes]

Umm, high pass filter?
And yes, they invented bass guitars for the purpose of having........well, bass

 

[Branden Giraudy]

Umm, high pass filter?
And yes, they invented bass guitars for the purpose of having........well, bass

True, but for all my recordings, the guitars have a little bass in it for a heavier approach and obviously I have the bass for the final blow.

I like the way my old method sounds, but I wanted to try removing all the bass from the guitar just to see how it sounds, and I want to know if this is how it's done by most producers.

 

[Harry Hughes]

To put it in perspective, Ermz (Ermin) from this forum said somewhere, IIRC, he uses a high pass filter set anywhere from 80Hz to 150Hz and I don't mean this in anyway to kiss his ass, but from an objective standpoint, I've yet to hear a larger and better sounding mix from anyone else on this forum (not including Sneap btw).
I'm not convinced you really there is a need to set the high pass filter any lower than 80-90Hz really.
I'd just set the HP filter anywhere including and above 80Hz and make sure the tone is just tracked well, so you get a good source tone.
"Mid bass" as they call it, seems to lie in the frequencies of 90-150Hz, so I think it's safe to say guitars still have bass in them, but it's just that all or at least almost all, the sub bass is filtered out of the sound as to make way for the bass guitar and kick drums.
But really, as obvious as it might sound, you need to concentrate on getting the guitars to just sound as good as possible within the mid range spectrum, and then worry about dealing with any excess shit that falls outside that frequency later with high/low pass filtering, multiband compression etc etc.
It's all about getting a decent separation in the mix. Guitars sound too big, they fuck with your mix, they sound too little, they fuck with your mix. Just like anything in this audio engineering realm, it's all about striving to reach the best balance possible.

 

[Branden Giraudy]

I'm going to show you how the guitars sound like originally without any bass reduction. I'll edit this when I finish uploading it.

 

[smoke.ya.later]

i hear some sizzling...
you frying some eggs while tracking guitars??

CUMMON!

but all jokes aside
leave some low end, so the chugs sound nice

 

[smoke.ya.later]

post the clips and ill mix em in like 5 seconds and ill show you what i did

if you want

 

[Ermz]

Depends on your disposition. Do you want something closer to a 'technically perfect' mix, ala electronic music (whose production generally pisses all over metal, just out of virtue of what it is)? If so, then use your bass as a bass, and use the guitar almost solely as a midrange element. If you are crafty about your mixing, you WILL make it sound both clearer AND heavier than leaving a ton of errant lows in your guitar sound. Having chuggy 'whoomp whoomp' rhythm sounds is great for boosting your e-peen with other guitarists, but in terms of a mix, at least in my opinion, it's utterly useless and most of the time detrimental to boot.

I find that setting a high high-pass on my guitars forces me to craft a better mix, because I have to use the bass guitar to fill the holes that it needs to be filling in the first place. Otherwise you end up running this balancing act between the kick, bass and guitar lows. It's hard enough to get a good kick/bass interaction, you really don't need to bring guitars into it. It's one of the biggest issues I tend to hear from the 'rate my mix' clips on here anyway. People have the guitar and bass clashing over the mid-bass and low-mids. It's a hard range to mix, and it really separates the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I struggle with it in every single project I ever mix. It's never been easy.

 

[Sam Bottner]

I like to highpass my guitars high (150-200 hz) because I'm in drop B and it sounds flubby if I don't do this. Then yeah, just let the bass do the work in the low frequencies.

 

[shredder10]

When i finnish my mixes, i tend to lift that range a bit because in someway they end up sounding thin.

Could i be chopping too much on this range?

 

[dfer]

How much of a dB slope are you guys using on your HP filter for guitars?

 

[P-E]

I just cut em straight out.

 

[Melb_shredder]

i use the steepest slope when i HP. And I usually start at 80hz and work my way up depending on the guitar/ amp used. I've gotten away with 80hz for many things without it sounding bassy or whoompy, but then when I try it with a recto that I've recorded at home before etc, it was about 115hz. Couldn't swing it any lower than that. And again, on the steepest slope!

 

[Branden Giraudy]

i hear some sizzling...
you frying some eggs while tracking guitars??

CUMMON!

but all jokes aside
leave some low end, so the chugs sound nice

Ha ha, I didn't tune my guitar and it was just a quick recording. :O

Everyone else: I'll post a clip soon using all the tips you guys recommended. Thanks.

 

[P-E]

i use the steepest slope when i HP. And I usually start at 80hz and work my way up depending on the guitar/ amp used. I've gotten away with 80hz for many things without it sounding bassy or whoompy, but then when I try it with a recto that I've recorded at home before etc, it was about 115hz. Couldn't swing it any lower than that. And again, on the steepest slope!

This.

 

[Spamds]

When I listened that, it sounded like its distorted to hell... maybe just my speakers.

 

[Josh Burgess]

To put it in perspective, Ermz (Ermin) from this forum said somewhere, IIRC, he uses a high pass filter set anywhere from 80Hz to 150Hz and I don't mean this in anyway to kiss his ass, but from an objective standpoint, I've yet to hear a larger and better sounding mix from anyone else on this forum (not including Sneap btw).
I'm not convinced you really there is a need to set the high pass filter any lower than 80-90Hz really.
I'd just set the HP filter anywhere including and above 80Hz and make sure the tone is just tracked well, so you get a good source tone.
"Mid bass" as they call it, seems to lie in the frequencies of 90-150Hz, so I think it's safe to say guitars still have bass in them, but it's just that all or at least almost all, the sub bass is filtered out of the sound as to make way for the bass guitar and kick drums.
But really, as obvious as it might sound, you need to concentrate on getting the guitars to just sound as good as possible within the mid range spectrum, and then worry about dealing with any excess shit that falls outside that frequency later with high/low pass filtering, multiband compression etc etc.
It's all about getting a decent separation in the mix. Guitars sound too big, they fuck with your mix, they sound too little, they fuck with your mix. Just like anything in this audio engineering realm, it's all about striving to reach the best balance possible.

You really don't need to set the high pass filter that high. Sneap himself recommends around 60 khz... maybe up to around 80 khz at the highest. I think it's better to try to get the amount of bass you want through adjusting amp settings and mic placement and then just using the high pass filter to clean things up a little bit. I think you can get away with the HPF at 60 khz even with low tunings and 7/8 string guitars.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with mixing the bass a little lower. I prefer Andy's style where the guitars and drums dominate the mix and the bass is just a foundation. Of course, he fits bass into the mix last... so he's fitting the bass in as a foundation to the guitars and the mix in general, whereas it seems like you and Ermz are trying to fit the guitars to the bass...

 

[Ermz]

It depends on the mindset you're tackling the mix from. I definitely don't think of my approach as 'fitting the guitars to the bass'. I think of it more as 'fitting everything where it has to be for optimum fidelity and relevance to the source material'. For metal that usually means clamping down on the lows of the guitar tracks.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Umm, hi-pass at 60hz and them try a low-shelf from around the lowest 'lower mids' if it's still too boomy. It's always a good idea to have something going on 'down there', but never to the point of pissing of the kick drum or bass guitar

 

[Fox Mulder]

I prefer Andy's style where the guitars and drums dominate the mix and the bass is just a foundation.

I seriously don't know how people get used to that.