Hi everyone,
I am having this strange and very frustrating sensation .....
for example, I am dialing in a tone (let's say Metallica, seems pretty popular around here these days ;-) ) for hours, finally I am happy and save the result.
Next day the preset sounds way to bass heavy. So, I am tweaking it again. Sounds great, saving!
Next day it sounds kind of thin...
<snip>
Cheers Boris
@Boris, mate, you are one of the lucky ones. Next day? I'd live with that quite easily. For me, I'll work on a "clean" tone, then go to a dirtier version, then a bit more dirt and delay for some lead sounds. When I get back to the clean sound, I'm thinking, "Wasn't it a bit cleaner than that? I'm sure it had a bit more 'body' in the mid-range, and the top end is feeling a little bright." This is only 5 minutes after I have set the baseline for the clean tone.
But.. I have something to calibrate it against. It is random, it is not objective, and it will hurt your ears. I am avoiding discrimination by referring to it as "it", as most I have met have chosen a gender. They are collectively known as "drummers", or singularly as a "drummer". If they turn out to make a good noise, I'll go as far as "The Drummer", but it hasn't happened too often in the 40 years I've been doing this.
When I have finished noodling, perfecting my tone for mid-warmth, body at the lower end, and top end sparkle, I can then invite a band I play in to rehearse, write, or whatever else. And suddenly none of the subtleties matter, because I'm looking for tonal spaces in the mix that I hadn't been expecting. If the cymbals (brassy looking shiny things that seem to have been invented to punish guitarists' ears; they look like the head of a giant drawing pin) are taking a particularly big punishment at that moment, it's kind of stupid to try to compete. The cymbals don't enjoy it, the guitarist doesn't enjoy it, the vocalist might actually notice something doesn't feel as good as usual.
There are even legends of bass players noticing that the drummer is punishing the cymbals to the detriment of the rest of the band's hearing, but I don't find them particularly convincing. I'll go with the more more plausible belief that the last time a drummer and bass player made meaningful eye-contact was between John-Paul Jones and John Bonham in 1976 or '77, and it was actually over who might get the last chicken vol au vent from the buffet provided in the rider.
But seriously, don't spend too long on it as others have said, see how it sounds alongside other instruments if appropriate. When I get to playing with a whole band the detail becomes material in completely different ways. (Can remember saying, "Mate, love what you're doing, but struggling to hear my guitar in the drum solos." There weren't any drum solos, but as soon as I got to my bit, he'd get over-excited and hit them as hard as he could!)
Other instruments played loud alongside us are a really helpful calibration of the detail we lose ourselves in.
Liam
