What's wrong with this guitar tone?

[mietschie]

Hi guys,

long story short, once again we try to record an album for my band. The problem like all the time is, we're struggling pretty hard on anything that doesn't come from computer, which is guitars (DI & Amp), bass DI and vocals.

I think my problem is most hearable with the recorded Amp. The signal chain is the following:

Engl Powerball2 or Invader > Engl Pro cab 412 with v30 speaker > shure SM7b > RME fireface Preamp/Interface > Logic

No post processing at all. The mic was placed with the pink noise technique from mickrich, which worked pretty good i guess. Thanks a ton for that!

Just some noodling for tone test:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52528604/powerball raw noodling.mp3

And a not so tight riff where two tracks are panned hard left and right with one time the invader, and one time the powerball.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52528604/invader raw.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52528604/powerball raw.mp3

What do I miss? Simply life, punch and clarity. I digged into the strings (which are new btw) really hard, but everthing sounds to me like there's some kind of veil over everything I record. The same translates to directly recorded DI's and Amp sims, I tried so many things over the past year with always the same result. Especially when I compare to untouched DI's or raw unprocessed Amp tones of lets say an Ola Englund or some other "Youtube-producers", who just put a sm57 in front of the speaker and the tone has just everything I'm missing here. I'm really desperate...

The tone we are aiming for is btw some kind of this:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyZGFmZDAdE&list=PL5PfmQnSNjP2KOWDcC5UTZohbndCAZYyF&index=2[/ame]

My only hope right now is, that i oversee here anything important. Maybe only a little unchecked hook in the preferences or a incompatible sampling rate/bit combination or anything minor like that just because I already tried sooo much with always the same tone.

Thanks for reading all this text. Hoping that anyone has a good tip for me.

 

[anotherpaul]

The tone is quite good actually. A little bit low-mid heavy for my personal taste, but still very powerfull and clear.
As for what you're missing - I would say bass and drums. Listening to guitars soloed doesn't make much sense.

 

[Loki Laufeyiarson]

Maybe turning the gain down a bit and add a bit of presence can help too.
And adding mids to the sound before it enters the amp.

 

[J.L.BeelerMusic]

The first sample was quite nice (I think it was the Invader I believe) and it seemed like it was fairly close to the TiJ reference. What might help get the guitars a little closer is having a boost before the amp and then dial the gain back just a little to compensate for it. Once you have drums and bass added to the mix your guitars aught to be good enough as the are anyway (with a little low and high pass to make room for the other instruments). The main thing I noticed is there is a lot of lead guitar melodies in TiJ that might be influencing your perspective on rhythm guitars.

 

[mietschie]

Hi guys,

thanks for the input so far! Gladly appreciate it.

@anotherpaul: you're right it doesn't make that much sense to hear them solod, but to judge the overall quality of an recording itself, i think it does make sense to hear them without the mix, to see if everything is there you could need in a later mix (which doesn't exist yet btw).

@Loki...: With adding mids you mean an EQ pedal or something? I believe the guitar we use has already plenty of mids and low-mids, so I think boosting them would result in even more low mid mud. But it's worth a try for sure.

@J.L.Beeler: The first sample actually was the Powerball. With boost in front, i guess you mean a tubescreamer right? I'm aware of the many lead lines in TIJ, but i really was referring to the pure rhythm sound. You can hear it much better in the song "Without a Head" from TIJ, that first accord, man that has balls <3 (i know the actual balls come from the base). I just couldn't find it on youtube since most of it is censored by GEMA here in germany.

But again, when comparing the raw unprocessed tones with tones from the mentioned "hobby producers" on here and on youtube (Ola Englund is just the best example, but there are much more) i find there's still a lack in quality with our recording although we're doing the exact same thing. Maybe I'm slowly gettin crazy with this whole recording thingy

 

[alex-sonic]

Guitars are killer! Maybe to much bass in it and some mud but they are pretty good!
Stop soloing your track and begin to mix with the bass Punch will come from here

 

[Ragvard]

Come on man those sound killer!
The only thing missing is hp/lp and you are ready to go.
For the mids thing: just try to turn them up on the amp, engl has a kind of scooped sound, even on highest mid setting (at least on my fireball, mids cranked all the way up). After that maybe the low mids are a bit out of control and need some adjustement via eq.

But all this is really just necessary, if you want or need more mids, at the moment the tone is great, try it in a mix, if it gets buried, go for the mids.

 

[Loki Laufeyiarson]

@Loki...: With adding mids you mean an EQ pedal or something? I believe the guitar we use has already plenty of mids and low-mids, so I think boosting them would result in even more low mid mud. But it's worth a try for sure.

Sure, an EQ pedal might do the trick, but a tube screamer of some sort was more what I was thinking of. Just try out different things. The earlier in your chain you get it to sound right, the easier it will be for you to get what you want in the end.

 

[mietschie]

Thanks again for all your tips guys but i fear that's still not what we are looking for. It's not the sound itself, it's rather the quality of all the recorded stuff (guitars through amp or modelling vst with impulse, bass or vocals, it doesn't matter). We're just missing clarity and some kind of dynamic warmth. It's really hard to describe but you can clearly hear it in the different samples. if you look at e. g. a misha mansoor on youtube, he just uses a axe fx and a cheap focusrite usb interface and gets these great sounding quality. There has to be something we oversee, maybe in the signal chain or in the DAW settings. i'm sorry for the expression but every muppet gets these sound quality with a usb interface, so why not us? i think we're just too stupid to make this work, it's so depressing guys -.-

Yesterday we tried all the things you said: tubescreamers, boosts, HP/LP Filters, endless tweaks on the amp EQ, even tried the Peavey Valveking head...

This time our reference was the guitar track from KSE's My Curse, which sounds like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52528604/my curse riff original.mp3

the closest we could achieve was this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52528604/my curse riff valveking.mp3

Please don't tell me that you can't hear that massive gap in quality. Don't get me wrong we don't want to have the exact same tone as above, but we want anything that plays in nearly the same league qualitywise. And our tone sounds just awful in comparison...

 

[neptunian]

This time our reference was the guitar track from KSE's My Curse, which sounds like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52528604/my curse riff original.mp3

the closest we could achieve was this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52528604/my curse riff valveking.mp3

Please don't tell me that you can't hear that massive gap in quality. Don't get me wrong we don't want to have the exact same tone as above, but we want anything that plays in nearly the same league qualitywise. And our tone sounds just awful in comparison...

I hear the difference. It's big enough that it's not just picking technique or string gauge.

Sounds like 80% wrong mic/cab selection, and 20% lack of clarity in the raw guitar (clean DI) signal.

For the latter, if you're using passive pickups then try a shorter (like 5 foot) cable to see how that affects the tone. Shorter = more clarity in the highs and less honky mids. Don't use a fat thick pick either.

As for cab/mic, if you're using impulses then the sky's the limit. Check Redline's recent thread with some great impulses. LP as needed, adjust the rolloff steepness to taste. The Messiah Impulses from Critical Cabs are good too.

If you're miking a cab for real then an SM7B into an Engl won't sound like a SM57 into a Mesa, period. You can either do the best with what you have via mic positioning or trying a different mic preamp, or miking a different speaker, etc. in addition to the guitar cable length tip.