Recording & Mixing guitars

[Bronco]

Hey all, been experimenting with my home studio lately, and I'm running into a lot of age-old problems: guitars are too compressed, too dark, too bright, too much distortion, not enough low end, too much low end, etc...you get the picture.

I was hoping to start a thread where we can establish some basic good practices recording (distorted) guitars, i.e. eq the amp to fit the mix? eq the mic pre? eq post mix? Obviously I'm only a novice, and admittedly quite sure I'm only scratching the surface. But I hear a lot of really good sounding clips on RT, and I wanna know how it's done!

Appreciate any insight anyone has to share...

 

[Vrad]

Hey all, been experimenting with my home studio lately, and I'm running into a lot of age-old problems: guitars are too compressed, too dark, too bright, too much distortion, not enough low end, too much low end, etc...you get the picture.

I was hoping to start a thread where we can establish some basic good practices recording (distorted) guitars, i.e. eq the amp to fit the mix? eq the mic pre? eq post mix? Obviously I'm only a novice, and admittedly quite sure I'm only scratching the surface. But I hear a lot of really good sounding clips on RT, and I wanna know how it's done!

Appreciate any insight anyone has to share...

Yeah it's not the easiest thing to capture guitars. It's taken me a really long time to find what works for me. You actually don't need that much. But I would HIGHLY recommend a good interface. I know people say "they're all the same" except they're not. After years of struggling with <$500 interfaces I bought an RME UCX and it was a huge step up for me in terms of recording quality.

That said, you don't need anything exotic to get started. If you'd like, you can PM me and we can talk about it. It's been a long journey for me but I'm finally happy with how my recordings are turning out.

 

[metalsoup]

One thing I would suggest before investing A LOT of money in recording gear is to give IRs (IR = impulse response) a shot. There are many great sounding IRs available (some free, some modestly priced) and in a full mix with bass, drums, etc., a good quality IR can perform very well, sitting in the mix perfectly and sounding very realistic. At least this route is worth considering if only because the cost is minimal especially in comparison to the cost of high end DAW interfaces, mics and mic preamps, etc. If in the end you're not satisfied with what IRs can do, you won't be out a lot of money and you'll have a benchmark to reference for future recording endeavors when you take on the difficult but rewarding challenge of micing up and recording an actual guitar cab.

 

[Pushead]

In my experience, you need less gain (guitar signal) than you think you do.

 

[crankyrayhanky]

It's really dependent on the material. Some stuff I dry quad track & others just need 1 solid guitar with thoughtful fx
Throw a clip & let's rip it apart

 

[errrrrl]

Hey all, been experimenting with my home studio lately, and I'm running into a lot of age-old problems: guitars are too compressed, too dark, too bright, too much distortion, not enough low end, too much low end, etc...you get the picture.

I was hoping to start a thread where we can establish some basic good practices recording (distorted) guitars, i.e. eq the amp to fit the mix? eq the mic pre? eq post mix? Obviously I'm only a novice, and admittedly quite sure I'm only scratching the surface. But I hear a lot of really good sounding clips on RT, and I wanna know how it's done!

Appreciate any insight anyone has to share...

I've been going thru those problems for the last year or so as well. I am slowly starting to put out better sounding test recordings (for me it was about silent recording mainly with IR's). Besides a decent interface as mentioned, getting a decent flat sounding/reference headphones or monitors are worth getting too.

As for sounding ok in a mix what I find myself doing lately is to get your drum loop or track in your DAW 1st and tweak the drums til it sounds how you want it. Then I like to play a riff in a looper (first in the chain, straight from the guitar and before any pedals) and insert that track into your DAW. I usually just palm mute or chug something simple then loop it. Start the drum tracks and start tweaking your amp settings til it sounds ok with the drums playing (and yeah my riff wont match the drums, its more of a tone match/test mix/adjusting mids/bass etc). This is where it helps to have a good set up headphones or monitors. Once you get your settings down to something your happy with I like to take pics of my amp and interface settings so its easy to replicate later.

Its kind of ghetto but it works ok for me, but if you have good gear you can learn to re-amp which is something I'd like to get into but not sure how serious I want to invest into recording gear since I just like to record song ideas mainly or just fuck around

Usually I get a decent pre mix this way to make my simple recordings and you can go about mastering, layering tracks, tweak out levels/VST plugins/EQ's later if need be. Good luck and post some test recordings!

 

[VH4_BigRig]

I guess it depends on how you're recording your tracks. Are you going direct? Or do you have a room where you're actually trying to mic your cabinet and record guitars that way?

One of the toughest things for me to learn as a guitar player was that you could have a great guitar, one of the most amazing amps in the world (in my case, VH4), and good quality mics, but if you don't have a good room to play and record in, it doesn't mean sh*t. My apartment sounded terrible for recording no matter what I did. Also, from my experience mic position is more important than your amp settings; if you don't find the sweet spot for the mic, your amp settings are almost irrelevant! I wasted a bunch of money ages ago buying and trying different mics, when the room and positioning were the issue. This was all part of the reason I jumped on the Kemper bandwagon, so I could get great tones direct without dealing with all of this, and it hasn't disappointed.

I haven't been mixing any full tracks lately, but I always found using EQ in the post mix to scoop some of the 400-500hz from the guitar while boosting it for the bass track helped things sound a bit better (as long as your guitars have enough mids to begin with).The other guys have mentioned some great points too- good monitoring, IRs and a good interface are all very beneficial as well! Good luck!

 

[maddnotez]

I'm not even close to being great at recording or mixing but some basic tips I've got (and liked) from research:

Mids on the amp are your friend.

Use less gain than normal.

More master/less channel volume (if applicable).

Let the bass bring the thunder.

Lo pass >80 and high pass to taste (10k?)

6k boost can really help...as mentioned cutting some mids can help

Always separate instrument eq's in the mix.

Many say subtract eq and never boost (but the 6k boost does work a lot for guitar)

Some also say if you boost a db also cut a db to make up for it and vice versa

Spend hours with mic placement

Google slippermans guide to recording guitars

 

[Viper]

More mids, less gain, multiple guitar tracks pan left and right guitars, guitars solos in the middle.

 

[Crunchity]

Since you said it's a little "home studio" setup for recording, once you've got those mics positioned well and you're getting tones you're happy enough with, don't be afraid to then leave them be and simply tweak the amps settings more to refine the tones from then on instead of fussing with with the mics. You'll be surprised at how wide a range of balancing tones out you can get with that method vs fighting the mics only to end up thinking "shit, that last mic tweak is worse than where i had it to begin with, shoulda left it alone, etc." Just get a nice, balanced tone happening, make those scratch clips, listen and then go tweak the amp accordingly to further get it where you want it to be sonically. Doesn't matter if your settings don't resemble "player x" settings, etc. I always kinda wonder why some dudes that have the same amps ask others (that record) what their settings are...in a live/band scenario that's cool I guess, but for tracking it really doesn't pan at that way. I've had guys compliment my tones and ask for the settings and when I tell them sometimes they're like "huh? You set your presence that low?" (or whatever)...and it's like "yeah, because I'm using such and such mic on such and such speaker that has a lot of teeth to it already, so the recorded tone sounds better this way!" Whatever works lol!

Also, for raw amp clips and solo type guitar tones, you don't really need to do the lo/hi pass filtering, it'll give a better example of the guitar/amp/speaker tone since it's all the listener hears...but of course in a full mix setting filtering works wonders helping the guitars sit right in there.