Sick of stereo guitars

[James Steele]

(why do so many guitarists tend to insist on hogging the bottom end?).

This one drives me nuts personally. Many guitarists I know, when they audtion amps, etc., are so enraptured with this idea of having lots of bass in their sound. They really want to have lots of low end. Well gosh... that might be cool if your whole show is going to be just you doing "Eruption" over and over. I've met lots of people that seem to forget that the kick drum and the bass are gonna need a place to live too and it doesn't help the sound of the mix when you start encroaching on their turf. Although if I ran sound for one of those bands, I'd just EQ it right out of there, but in smaller rooms all that low end coming directly from the amp is going to muddy stuff up. But then again, I still like music where the "singer" isn't SCREAMING and the band trying to sound like the pit of hell has opened up-- so what the hell do I know?

[Resonant Alien]

(why do so many guitarists tend to insist on hogging the bottom end?).

This one drives me nuts personally. Many guitarists I know, when they audtion amps, etc., are so enraptured with this idea of having lots of bass in their sound. They really want to have lots of low end. Well gosh... that might be cool if your whole show is going to be just you doing "Eruption" over and over. I've met lots of people that seem to forget that the kick drum and the bass are gonna need a place to live too and it doesn't help the sound of the mix when you start encroaching on their turf. Although if I ran sound for one of those bands, I'd just EQ it right out of there, but in smaller rooms all that low end coming directly from the amp is going to muddy stuff up. But then again, I still like music where the "singer" isn't SCREAMING and the band trying to sound like the pit of hell has opened up-- so what the hell do I know?

Being a guitarist myself, this was the hardest lesson for me to learn when I started recording (both being recorded and recording other guitarist).....when you are playing your amp by yourself in your house, you naturally add a lot of bottom end to make it sound good alone. When you are rehearsing with your band, you realize you need to pull out some of the bass. But as soon as you try to record and mix it with a bass guitar and kick drum, you realize just how little bass freqs a guitar actually needs. Most of the time, when you have a guitar track that fits in the mix nicely and sounds good, if you solo it up, it really doesn't sound very good on its own. That's the hard part for a guitarist to get their head around.

[mhschmieder]

Thanks to all for enlightening me. I understand very well what was said and will put it to use at my next sessions later this month. And I have convinced at least ONE of the guitarists I work with to at least recognise the need for notching out some of the low end of the lead guitar .

[chrispick]

(why do so many guitarists tend to insist on hogging the bottom end?).

This one drives me nuts personally. Many guitarists I know, when they audtion amps, etc., are so enraptured with this idea of having lots of bass in their sound. They really want to have lots of low end. Well gosh... that might be cool if your whole show is going to be just you doing "Eruption" over and over. I've met lots of people that seem to forget that the kick drum and the bass are gonna need a place to live too and it doesn't help the sound of the mix when you start encroaching on their turf. Although if I ran sound for one of those bands, I'd just EQ it right out of there, but in smaller rooms all that low end coming directly from the amp is going to muddy stuff up. But then again, I still like music where the "singer" isn't SCREAMING and the band trying to sound like the pit of hell has opened up-- so what the hell do I know?

You make a good point, one especially applicable to rock music mixing. The way to give a mix a good, heavy bottom is to let the bass guitar, kick and low toms have their own space to ring out.

A lot of mix engineers begin rolling off guitar low end as high as 150 to 200 hz. You don't have to shelf at these frequencies; you can ramp them off gradually.

Of course, it all gets trickier when distortion baritone and Drop D guitars are used. Mixing that stuff is tough.

I'd add that most amps in room seem to emit more bass frequency because they're on the floor. The frequencies coming straight out of the speaker (and into a 57 or 121 or whatever) don't have the same bottom. So, guitarists are fooled into thinking they normally kick out more low end from the source.

[James Steele]

I'd add that most amps in room seem to emit more bass frequency because they're on the floor. The frequencies coming straight out of the speaker (and into a 57 or 121 or whatever) don't have the same bottom. So, guitarist are fooled into thinking they normally kick out more low end from the source.

Interesting point. You know it reminds me that I've seen these things sold on online music stores I think that you are supposed to put on the stage and then set your cab on top to decouple from the stage. Most stages anyway in the clubs I've played in are hollow... just plywood over 2x4 framing and resonate quite a bit. I suppose on thing I could do in that situation is put the casters back on my bottom cabs to get it off the stage, but it always felt shaky to me on the casters... especially on some of the creaky club stages I've played on... LOL.

Any way, I pride myself on my guitar sound. I once played a gig a while back at some club while I was using my Les Paul primarily and actually got a complimented by the house sound guy over the PA during soundcheck on how good my rig sounded. It meant a lot since he sees lots of bands come through there... of course lots of them are young kids who think a Line 6 head is tone... hahaha... (just kidding. P.S. Nothing beats a dialed in Marshall head! bwahahahaha!!)

[zara_drummer]

This discussion brings up something that happend to me when I first started recording...

I was told that by people who listened to my crappy mixes that the guitars sounded thin and had no presense...At the time the guitar player was using a Crate solid state amp, so the thin sound wasnt really my doing..it was more a product of the equipment used.

Later he picked up a Crate BV120 tube head, got a better cab and now his sound is truely PHAT! I use a Senheyser E609 silver to record him with...The guitar is now present and no longer thin...My mic technique and mixing has gotten better along the way, but outside of some compression I really dont mess with his guitar sound much.

The other guitar player plays a solid state setup...A Boss GT6 into a Mackie 1400 power amp...then to a sonic maximizer, then out to 2 4x12 cabs. His setup was by far the hardest thing to ever record. We spent an hour jacking with his sound till it sounded good outta the cab, but when it translated to tape it was muddy crap. Took out the maximizer..still muddy crap. It was extremely frustrating...I even asked him to run his GT6 thru the other guitar players tube head but he was somewhat insulted and went on about tube emulation blah blah...

That solid state setup has so many lows, all around 150-500hz, I had to pretty much cut them all...

Anyone have any thoughts on this??

[chrispick]

I was told that by people who listened to my crappy mixes that the guitars sounded thin and had no presense...At the time the guitar player was using a Crate solid state amp, so the thin sound wasnt really my doing..it was more a product of the equipment used.

You know, this can be a result of overdriving the amp too much for recording purposes. A good rule of thumb is to back off the distortion a notch when tracking. It can be hard to convince those guitarists going for a Dimebag Darrell vibe to do this, but it works. Again, I think it has to do with the mic being so close to the source; it doesn't need as much to cut through.

Later he picked up a Crate BV120 tube head, got a better cab and now his sound is truely PHAT! I use a Senheyser E609 silver to record him with...The guitar is now present and no longer thin...My mic technique and mixing has gotten better along the way, but outside of some compression I really dont mess with his guitar sound much.

The other guitar player plays a solid state setup...A Boss GT6 into a Mackie 1400 power amp...then to a sonic maximizer, then out to 2 4x12 cabs. His setup was by far the hardest thing to ever record. We spent an hour jacking with his sound till it sounded good outta the cab, but when it translated to tape it was muddy crap. Took out the maximizer..still muddy crap. It was extremely frustrating...I even asked him to run his GT6 thru the other guitar players tube head but he was somewhat insulted and went on about tube emulation blah blah...

That solid state setup has so many lows, all around 150-500hz, I had to pretty much cut them all...

Anyone have any thoughts on this??

Well, a Boss GT6 to a Mackie to a Maximizer to a cab certainly doesn't seem wise on paper at least. I don't think you can get a good guitar sound without a good guitar amp. Plus, I'm of the opinion you trade quality tone for quantity sfx with multi-effects boxes.

As for solid state vs. tube: I've heard good stuff come out of solid state amps. They're certainly not a great deficit for clean guitars when tubes wouldn't be pushed.

The trick to getting overdriven solid state amps to sound good is gain-staging, I think. Run through a compressor, driving it a little, then through a distortion pedal, driving that a little more, then push the amp.

Also, I think Sonic Maximizers have to be used very lightly; otherwise, they add all sorts of harmonics that'll f**k up the sound.

Lastly, you could try mic'ing his amp with an SM 57 or MD 421. I really like the 421s. They have a roll-off and hike some of the higher frequencies nicely. I've yet to use a Royer 121, but a lot of people really dig them for rock guitar.

My two cents.

[zara_drummer]

Thanks for the advice!!

I tried a couple of different mic configs...with a 57, then with a Oktave MK12 (didnt sound bad) and finally decided to use the E609.

Personally I hate his rig...but he thinks that most of his processing comes from the GT6. Taking the maximizer out helped some but in the end he tweeked it to the point where it was tollerable.

I think solid state it is great for leads and some emulation...his pushed distortion sounded like butt! all of his leads recorded beautifully though.

[gearboy]

Ahhh, Sonic Maximizers in guitar rigs. I remember those days.

For recording, I really prefer small, low-wattage tube amps. I own a Mesa-Boogie DC-3, a Fender Pro Junior with JJ tubes, an old Moviola URS tube amp that used to be used for film editing in the 60s/70s (still need to mod for guitar). I'm also looking for the perfect blackface or silverface Fender Princeton Reverb. Now THAT'S a recording amp!!!

I whole-heartedly agree with backing off on distortion while tracking. Lots of distortion seems to always screw with fitting other things in the mix (snare, vox). Sometimes I prefer to fuzz out the bass a little and back down on the guitars. Obviously this depends on the project. I use a modded Tubescreamer through a cranked tube amp. It really growls. Not like a Marshall, but I like it.

I listen to a lot of different styles of music, but as far as guitar tone is concerned, I learned a lot from Trey Anastasio of Phish. If you listen to his tone on record (and live), it is all fat midrange, leaving plenty of room for bass and piano, b3, Wurl, Moog., etc. Even the highs seem pleasantly rolled off to allow room.

He has amazing tone. Custom Langoudock hollowbody --> two tubescreamers (analog man) --> Ross Compressor (now analog man Ross clone) --> Fender Blackface Twin Reverb. He gets great cleans (Fender), great tubey tones, and great distortion, but everything remains bell-like and round.

Most important... the arrangement. A good arrangement will leave room for all of the instruments in a mix. Rolling off some EQ here and there with correct where the crossover points of these instruments/parts come together.

Jeff

[James Steele]

I even asked him to run his GT6 thru the other guitar players tube head but he was somewhat insulted and went on about tube emulation blah blah...

Let me guess... he wasn't going on about how tube emulation sucks, was he? Sorry, in this instance I'm going to be opinionated and say that the best guitar tones are still to be found with quality tube heads. Some will disagree. That's fine. But my opinion is that tube amps still rule for hard drivin' rock and roll.

I remember auditioning guitarists for my former cover band. We put out and ad in the local musician rag and I went so far as to say that a decent tube amp was a requirement. That prompted one particularly amusing piece of hate e-mail actually... LOL.

At this point I'm tempted to go into all the crap rigs we had to endure during those auditions, but I'm afraid some people will figure out I'm talking about them and get angry with me, so I'll resist the temptation. Suffice to say good guitar tone is apparently more subjective than it should be these days. Also, a great guitar tone is not necessarily cheap. Every link in the chain has an effect on the sound, but for example between my original tube head, mods, cabinets, effects and switching, I've got a good $4K invested in my guitar rig... and that's just a single stack utilizing one head. I know guys who've got more than that invested easily. XYZ company will tell you they can sell you a digital whiz-bang floorboard for $199 that will sound just like it. Uh-huh... sure.

[zara_drummer]

Sadly he was makin an argument FOR tube emulation...at that point I just gave up and said whatever...I'm just a dumb drummer wtf do I know?? LOL!!!


I agree though...Tube is great and easy to record. Next time out I will back off the distortion etc...those are some great ideas.

Im partial to the Dual rec mesa...thats pretty much the sound we were going for. The BV120 is also very very adequate. Since my EGT player owns one then it makes life that much easier lol...

He also uses a B-52 4x12. It has a great crunch!! His sound is much like Taproots, but he's a much more melodic player.

[James Steele]

The Mesas are good amps. I'm more of a Marshall guy myself, but Mesa, Marshall, Peavy 5150, etc. are groovy off-the-shelf tube amps. Then there are boutique amps out there that cost much more. I'm pretty happy with a good sounding Marshall. I'm especially particular to the mid to late 70s 100-watt MkII Master Lead heads with the 6550 power tubes. I dig those big time and that's what my main head is although it's had mods done to it.

[porieux]

(why do so many guitarists tend to insist on hogging the bottom end?).

Being a guitarist myself, this was the hardest lesson for me to learn when I started recording (both being recorded and recording other guitarist).....when you are playing your amp by yourself in your house, you naturally add a lot of bottom end to make it sound good alone. When you are rehearsing with your band, you realize you need to pull out some of the bass. But as soon as you try to record and mix it with a bass guitar and kick drum, you realize just how little bass freqs a guitar actually needs. Most of the time, when you have a guitar track that fits in the mix nicely and sounds good, if you solo it up, it really doesn't sound very good on its own. That's the hard part for a guitarist to get their head around.

Totally agree, I am still trying to learn this

For some reason you just reminded me of Metallica's And Justice For All... heheh

[aizo]

lately i have been recording a lot of those hardcore/metal bands you have seen a lot of on mtv. not the ones on tv but that type. anyway, these guys are using drop c. it's killing me. they jack up the lows in their guitars. so many low ends it's impossible to get a good kick. so i have to constantly go into the live room and adjust these guys rigs and give them the explanation that the bass and kick handle the a** of the song.

i usually do the hard pan stereo with these bands though. the rhythm guy plays some low chugs with pinch harmonics. and the lead guy comes in with some accentuating higher octave playin. sounds really nice for their style. i would use it on th softer stuff.

also if you get sick of the stereo panned guitars. you could always go back to old beatles thing. put the drums on one side and the vocals on the other and the guitars in the middle.

[oldguitars]

Thankfully i have never had to endure the low end thing. Even as a guitarist, i never wanted to intrude on bass territory.... As i always think and still do that bass is LOWER than the guitar.... isn't that what the word "bass" is referring to? Regarding the stereo thing, i use it when it is right. otherwise i really dig the stones approach, two interlocking different parts...