Setting up your guitars for recording
Why does my guitar not sound as awesome as the clips the guys on the board are posting ?
How can people with cheap-ass gear have such great guitar tones ?
Some guys tend to have problems with setting up the instruments in oder to get a good sound out of them for recording, so I figured I would do a quick guide that will hopefully be helpfull and interesting to recording newcomers.
I will mainly cover the preperation of a guitar for a good recording.
1. Strings
Assuming you have already chosen your guitar, pickups and bridge to your liking and style the most important factor here are the strings.
This is still a question of taste in most cases, although some general things can be said regarding the gauges.
Your strings should be somewhere around this (low E string):
E: 0.46-0.50
D: 0.50-0.54
C: 0.54-0.56
B: >0.56
A: >0.60
An important factor of the string tension is your guitars's scale length (In most cases 25.5 or 24.75, sometimes 27-29).
In general the shorter the scale, the less tension is on the string if youre using the same gauge.
If youre for example switching from a 25.5 scale guitar to a 24.75, you might wan't to add some thing around 0.02-0.05 of thickness to your strings depending on your liking.
The sound of your guitar will change with the tension, a low tension generally sounds more "ballsy" and crunchy, but a low tension can get noisy and hard to play (especially fast), and the opposite. You should avoid tuning lower than D with your standard strings.
2. Guitar Setup
The guitar has to be setup well for a nice recording, and your don't need to be a tech to do this.
The first thing is always going to be the height of the bridge.
Adjust it in a way that its comfortable playing it, don't have the action to high, it will be harder to play.
Now to the trussrod (Screw on the headstock of the guitar, usually hidden under a black plate). Turn it it slowly (!) with the supplied tool that came with your guitar until your neck is slightly bowed inwards. To check, press down (or capo) the first and the last fret of your lowest string and look at the 10th fret.
The distance between the low side of the string an the top of the fret (the fret, not the fingerboard) should be somewhat around 0.5 mm (Since youre a guitarist you can easily measure this with picks, their thickness is usualy written on the side, you can also use a check card, it has somewhat the same width).
There are a lot of tutorials for trussrod adjustments on the web, just google it if you encounter any problems or have never that it before.
You might have to adjust the height of the bridge again as it chages with the bow of the neck.
You will now have to adjust the hight of your pickups to your liking, there is usually a sweetspot between hitting it with the string and don't getting enough output (practically "gain").
3. Preperation and avoiding noise
Vibration is noise.
Fix everything (tighten the tuning Pegs an electronics), nothing should rattle or vibrate on the guitar except for the strings.
Now it depends on the type of bridge youre using.
If its somewhat of a tune-o-matic there are two critical spots of noise that will fuck up your recording when using somewhat high gain.
The first and most important is between the nut and the tuning pegs.
Its the area that makes the high string noise when you slip your finger over it.
These "little strings" will vibrate with the rest of the guitar upon strumming and make irritating squeaky noises.
Now the almighty paper towel comes into play.
Just take one piece of it and roll it together until it becomes turd.
Put this thing around the strings over the nut and knot its end together on the back of the neck.
It looks retarded but it helps.
I have seen people doing the wierdest stuff to their guitars up there (putting tape on the strings or glueing sponge material to the neck), but this method takes three seconds and works perfectly.
Just don't let the actual strings under the nut be touched by it.
No you can form another turd, fold it in the middle and jam it under the strings behind the bridge to dead'n them there too.
You can use a pen for pushing it under there if it doesn't work on first try.
On a floyd rose style bridge you just do the same to the area over the nut, but a new factor of noise comes in: the springs of the bridge.
They basically act as a "spring reverb"
D) and have to be stopped from vibrating all the time.
This is very important and huge factor of noise on recording as it makes it impossible to actually stop the strings after playing.
A wierd "reverb" sound will occur and blur your stops and spaces in between notes.
To solve the problem something will have to touch the strings all the time and prevent them from vibrating.
you can do this with paper towels to, but I tend to youse cleaning sponges and cut them into the right size as they are a lot more dense then the towels and last longer.
Just find out what works for you.
"Knot turd" obove the trussrod
Fixing the bridge (stop tailpiece) on my Ninja.
The Floyd cavity of my Agile 7 String V.
All these steps should hopefully enable you to record nicer and cleaner guitar tracks in the future.
Some info might be redundand and boring to experienced players, but this mainly for noobs.
Oh, excuse my suck-ass English skillz, I hope you understand atleast something.
Greetings, Max.
Why does my guitar not sound as awesome as the clips the guys on the board are posting ?
How can people with cheap-ass gear have such great guitar tones ?
Some guys tend to have problems with setting up the instruments in oder to get a good sound out of them for recording, so I figured I would do a quick guide that will hopefully be helpfull and interesting to recording newcomers.
I will mainly cover the preperation of a guitar for a good recording.
1. Strings
Assuming you have already chosen your guitar, pickups and bridge to your liking and style the most important factor here are the strings.
This is still a question of taste in most cases, although some general things can be said regarding the gauges.
Your strings should be somewhere around this (low E string):
E: 0.46-0.50
D: 0.50-0.54
C: 0.54-0.56
B: >0.56
A: >0.60
An important factor of the string tension is your guitars's scale length (In most cases 25.5 or 24.75, sometimes 27-29).
In general the shorter the scale, the less tension is on the string if youre using the same gauge.
If youre for example switching from a 25.5 scale guitar to a 24.75, you might wan't to add some thing around 0.02-0.05 of thickness to your strings depending on your liking.
The sound of your guitar will change with the tension, a low tension generally sounds more "ballsy" and crunchy, but a low tension can get noisy and hard to play (especially fast), and the opposite. You should avoid tuning lower than D with your standard strings.
2. Guitar Setup
The guitar has to be setup well for a nice recording, and your don't need to be a tech to do this.
The first thing is always going to be the height of the bridge.
Adjust it in a way that its comfortable playing it, don't have the action to high, it will be harder to play.
Now to the trussrod (Screw on the headstock of the guitar, usually hidden under a black plate). Turn it it slowly (!) with the supplied tool that came with your guitar until your neck is slightly bowed inwards. To check, press down (or capo) the first and the last fret of your lowest string and look at the 10th fret.
The distance between the low side of the string an the top of the fret (the fret, not the fingerboard) should be somewhat around 0.5 mm (Since youre a guitarist you can easily measure this with picks, their thickness is usualy written on the side, you can also use a check card, it has somewhat the same width).
There are a lot of tutorials for trussrod adjustments on the web, just google it if you encounter any problems or have never that it before.
You might have to adjust the height of the bridge again as it chages with the bow of the neck.
You will now have to adjust the hight of your pickups to your liking, there is usually a sweetspot between hitting it with the string and don't getting enough output (practically "gain").
3. Preperation and avoiding noise
Vibration is noise.
Fix everything (tighten the tuning Pegs an electronics), nothing should rattle or vibrate on the guitar except for the strings.
Now it depends on the type of bridge youre using.
If its somewhat of a tune-o-matic there are two critical spots of noise that will fuck up your recording when using somewhat high gain.
The first and most important is between the nut and the tuning pegs.
Its the area that makes the high string noise when you slip your finger over it.
These "little strings" will vibrate with the rest of the guitar upon strumming and make irritating squeaky noises.
Now the almighty paper towel comes into play.
Just take one piece of it and roll it together until it becomes turd.
Put this thing around the strings over the nut and knot its end together on the back of the neck.
It looks retarded but it helps.
I have seen people doing the wierdest stuff to their guitars up there (putting tape on the strings or glueing sponge material to the neck), but this method takes three seconds and works perfectly.
Just don't let the actual strings under the nut be touched by it.
No you can form another turd, fold it in the middle and jam it under the strings behind the bridge to dead'n them there too.
You can use a pen for pushing it under there if it doesn't work on first try.
On a floyd rose style bridge you just do the same to the area over the nut, but a new factor of noise comes in: the springs of the bridge.
They basically act as a "spring reverb"
D) and have to be stopped from vibrating all the time.This is very important and huge factor of noise on recording as it makes it impossible to actually stop the strings after playing.
A wierd "reverb" sound will occur and blur your stops and spaces in between notes.
To solve the problem something will have to touch the strings all the time and prevent them from vibrating.
you can do this with paper towels to, but I tend to youse cleaning sponges and cut them into the right size as they are a lot more dense then the towels and last longer.
Just find out what works for you.
All these steps should hopefully enable you to record nicer and cleaner guitar tracks in the future.
Some info might be redundand and boring to experienced players, but this mainly for noobs.
Oh, excuse my suck-ass English skillz, I hope you understand atleast something.
Greetings, Max.
