How To Get That Powerful Guitar Tone

[Jizz]

so yeah, me and my mate have been making some stuff that's a mix of rock and electronic for a while; one thing that we just can't seem to get is a powerful guitar tone when it's in the mix. It's a very nice tone on it's own but when I put it in the mix and try to eq it in whatever way possible it always comes out weak.

Is the solution down to getting the right mix between the guitars and the bass, or am I thinking about it the wrong way? I'm currently highpassing our distorted guitars around 80 hz and lowpassing our sub bass around the same...


I know this isn't a guitar forum haha but still, surely there's a couple of people in here who knows a thing or two

[mthrfnk]

I struggled with this quite a bit on this track I made a while back:
Soundcloud

I realise it's not great so you might want to take my advice with a pinch of salt, but anyways I did a similar thing to you except I doubled the guitar track and panned one left, one right with a few ms delay, to add stereo width, added a fair few effects (distortion, compression & saturation). Then I layered the sub, routed the sub and guitar to a buss on which I had another set of effects: FerricTDS and a compressor - I think I used Density MkII, if not I'll have used FL's multiband comp.

[Sharmaji]

chances are a single guitar tone isn't going to cut it if you've got really big synths, and you want the guitar to either match, or blend nicely with, them.

just finished mixing a project that involved alot of this. For guitars, i got the rhythm tracks double-tracked, and each double-track was through 2 different amps and I got the DI. I re-amped the DI through an amp here as well... so basically, for each section, i had at least 8 tracks (performance 1: amp 1, amp2, re-amp, di; same for performance 2).

eq out the ugly bits of each channel, bus them together, and then some really intense compression and things started to vibe.

various delays help as well-- a bone-dry guitar just won't have the power of a very processed synth. short 'verbs can help add high-end w/o getting things washy. sending to a phaser or other delay mod can really help increase grit as well.

finally-- record the guitar w/ less gain than you think. it may sound huge and rock-y when solo'd, but by itself, it'll devolve into just being white noise. you really need to be able to hear the strings gets strummed in order to get that edge-- thus, the DI, and compression.

[Jizz]

jheeze that's a lot of amps sharmaji, we've just got one amp emulator on it and that's it, might think about double-tracking and adding more amps...

you talk about "intense compression"; is adding compression to an already distorted guitar a good idea though?

we'll re-record at a lower gain and see how that helps as well; I seriously think it' the eq and delays that are messing it up though, I just cannot seem to get the right balance between guitar and sub, and the delays always end up being either too long or too short... my lack of experience in this side of production is certainly starting to show haha

[Hircine]

Everything Sharmaji said. You can also highpass the guitar at 150~200 hz and layer it with a saw wave going through guitar amp and distortion.

[Jizz]

For guitars, i got the rhythm tracks double-tracked, and each double-track was through 2 different amps and I got the DI. I re-amped the DI through an amp here as well... so basically, for each section, i had at least 8 tracks (performance 1: amp 1, amp2, re-amp, di; same for performance 2).

slightly confused by this; did you basically take a DI and route it through 3 different amps and then mix it with a 4th channel that has the original DI recording, or did you use 2 mic recordings for amps 1 &2 and then a DI dry and a DI with an amp? Or have I just entirely misunderstood lool?

Everything Sharmaji said. You can also highpass the guitar at 150~200 hz and layer it with a saw wave going through guitar amp and distortion.

interesting, will give that a try too

[ridethecliche]

I struggled with this quite a bit on this track I made a while back:
Soundcloud

I realise it's not great so you might want to take my advice with a pinch of salt, but anyways I did a similar thing to you except I doubled the guitar track and panned one left, one right with a few ms delay, to add stereo width, added a fair few effects (distortion, compression & saturation). Then I layered the sub, routed the sub and guitar to a buss on which I had another set of effects: FerricTDS and a compressor - I think I used Density MkII, if not I'll have used FL's multiband comp.

That sounds awesome!

[Jizz]

oh yeah there's another problem we're having as well; a guitar patch we worked up on Amplitube sounds good on the standalone version but when we load it onto the VST version in Ableton it sounds a lot more weaker... is there some obvious option that I need to change to solve this?

[mthrfnk]

I struggled with this quite a bit on this track I made a while back:
Soundcloud

I realise it's not great so you might want to take my advice with a pinch of salt, but anyways I did a similar thing to you except I doubled the guitar track and panned one left, one right with a few ms delay, to add stereo width, added a fair few effects (distortion, compression & saturation). Then I layered the sub, routed the sub and guitar to a buss on which I had another set of effects: FerricTDS and a compressor - I think I used Density MkII, if not I'll have used FL's multiband comp.

That sounds awesome!

Hah, thanks...

[Sharmaji]

oh yeah there's another problem we're having as well; a guitar patch we worked up on Amplitube sounds good on the standalone version but when we load it onto the VST version in Ableton it sounds a lot more weaker... is there some obvious option that I need to change to solve this?

if it sounds good, print it.

for the track i was mixing, i got sent 6 files: performance 1 amp 1, performance amp2, and performance 1 DI; then same goes for performance 2. The actual files were kinda over-processed for my tastes; a mix of an sm57 up front and a u87 a few feet back, parallel compressed through an SSL G series feeding an 1176. all sounds nice, sure, but i'd rather have had no room mic-- wasn't into the vibe from it.

so yeah, i then re-amped the DI of each side to get the sound of a driven smaller amp, and kept the DI in the mix so that the sound of the strings could come through more.

if it's just a guitar-bass-drums thing, sure, a single amp can sound really awesome. Even then though, most things you hear these days are multi-amped sounds. That way you can tailor each amp to a particular part of the sound; a really driven 4x12 for the huge chunk, a small 10" amp for low end, the DI for clarity... mix and match until you have the balance you want. Think of it as frequency splitting in the analog realm. You can do the same by using mutliple mics on the same source (including a guitar amp)-- a ribbon, a 57, and a condenser-- blend until it's got the balance you want.

compression on electric guitar is both entirely un-necessary and completely necessary. distorted electric guitar is pretty much the least dynamic instrument in the world; overdrive AND gain driving a speaker, mic'd by a dynamic mic? not a lot of dynamic range in there. Thus youre compressing for tone; an 1176, or an 1176 followed by an la3a or something else thick and gooey, can really help to bring out the top and bottom ends of the sound, making it more vibrant and just sounding more like music, rather than a recording.

there was a great, 30-page-odd long rant about recording guitar somewhere on the web; wish i could find it now. basically what it comes down to is that you've got this massive sound in the studio, some gigantic amp or amps pushing 120dB in the room-- your goal w/ electric guitar is to get it sounding huge and loud and awesome in the mix. compression really helps w/ that sense of hugeness.

[Jizz]

Thanks for all the advice Sharmaji, took some of it into account and tried out a couple of different approaches to the processing and now we've got a much more powerful sound

got another weird problem now though haha, the guitar always starts a millisecond after the first kick; I'm guessing this is down to me messing with the position of the recording in relation to the kick, need to get down to some micro-editing to sort this out