Remember scooping your mids for the first time???

ewill52 said:
It was epiphanous, but only for a moment. It was like when I figured out drop D lol. If i scoop my mids now with the stuff we play, i disappear in the mix. Seems to work for the metal guys really well though and it's just a crushing tone.
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You need mids for metal guitar too. Otherwise, you disappear in the mix - seen that way too often! It's selected mids, and the selected mids have to be in conjunction with the other instruments in the band. You can't just blindly go for specific ones, but listen and adjust. At the end of the day, the guitar is still a midrange instrument, and that's where you're going to be heard in the mix. It's just fine tuning the specifics in that range.
 
Used to do it on my 3 channel Dual Recto for years. The revelation actually came when I started to turn them in.
 
Absolutely loved it.

Until I started playing with a band, and couldn't understand why I was unable to hear myself, unless I cranked the amp so loud that my feedback was out of control.
 
Bram576 said:
Yep, people have no concept of what sounding good in a band setting is like vs playing alone either.
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This. I love playing with dropped mids at home...then I'd take the same rig to my gig, and at soundcheck.......
The bass player cut better than me. That was it for the scoop lol. Fun to goof with it though, super loud and shake the walls.....but all you'll hear live is the low end thump of your palm mutes...
 
rstites said:
You need mids for metal guitar too. Otherwise, you disappear in the mix - seen that way too often! It's selected mids, and the selected mids have to be in conjunction with the other instruments in the band. You can't just blindly go for specific ones, but listen and adjust. At the end of the day, the guitar is still a midrange instrument, and that's where you're going to be heard in the mix. It's just fine tuning the specifics in that range.
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This....on records it's one thing; you can get by with any type of eq-ing since it's mixed in the recording to stick out even if it's scooped. But, I've seen some heavy bands live, that sound like they're playing through a boosted Marshall vs the distorted Bass tone on their records. Completely different sound on stage than what you hear on the download.
 
I got a 20 watt Mesa Boogie Subway Rocket and it has a "Contour" switch that turns the amp into a super heavy chugging beast LOL . It will floor you when you first hear it but I rarely ever use it .
 
Racerxrated said:
This....on records it's one thing; you can get by with any type of eq-ing since it's mixed in the recording to stick out even if it's scooped. But, I've seen some heavy bands live, that sound like they're playing through a boosted Marshall vs the distorted Bass tone on their records. Completely different sound on stage than what you hear on the download.
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A huge difference is that you're typically mono live, so it's all about frequency allocation. A stereo mix has the ability to shift where something sets in space (even if it's a virtual space) in addition to frequency. It opens up a lot of possibilities that just aren't there in a live mix.
 
VESmedic said:
Nothing wrong with the scoop, most tones are far more scooped than people realize. And people use too much fucking midrange these days anyways. Bloat city. Boxy, dark, gross, because “ MIDZ GUYZ!”… total horseshit. You need an ample scoop around 350hz or so more often than not, it’s About scooping the right frequencies.
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Agreed.

The whole argument that guitar is a midrange instrument is fine if you're doing weedly weedly all the time, but most people don't realize the low E is around 80 Hz, and that's not even downtuning.

Plus it's easy for a midrangy guitar sound to step on the vocals' space as well.
 
Rex Rocker said:
Agreed.

The whole argument that guitar is a midrange instrument is fine if you're doing weedly weedly all the time, but most people don't realize the low E is around 80 Hz, and that's not even downtuning.

Plus it's easy for a midrangy guitar sound to step on the vocals' space as well.
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Exactly. If you eq your guitars to be “I love MIDZ!”, the vocal is gonna be completely shot. There is so much that “sits in the midrange” in a mix, the guitar, an inherently midrange instrument, doesn’t need more of it. 350hz is universally in just about any instrument a terrible frequency, and a wide cut around this area adds tons of articulation, clarity, and focus.


Your 5150 ( mids) boosted with a tubescreamer ( more mids) into a v30 cab (1k city) mic’d with an sm57 ( all midrange) has plenty of midrange…. Turn that shit the fuck down.
 
Playing with your mids scooped is fun when you're 15 and playing in your bedroom, but it completely sucks when you're playing with a live band. Mids are your guitars essential frequencies. When you scoop them out, you're left with frequencies that are competing with bass and cymbals. The only way to combat this is to turn up louder and louder. Great way to start a band fight.

Amplifier designers for the most part kinda know what they're doing, so when you've got your EQ settings all at noon, you can pretty much get a decent tone without deviating too much from that.
 
In my first band I used to run a 31 band graphic EQ and boost the extreme low and high (looking back, completely unnecessary) frequencies. As if that didn't sound bad enough, the signal then went through a BBE sonic maximizer. That was brutal (as in awful) before being brutal was a thing.
 
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