Favorite Recordings to Test Guitar Tone in the Mix

[raccoon]

I used to be a live soundguy and during a soundcheck I was placing mics. One of the guitarists had this big amp and his sound was all scooped. No mids just bass and treble. If you took one step out of the range of his speakers his sound was completely lost in just the stage mix. I really really don't understand the obsession so many metal guitarists have with scooping the mids. Not only is it the last thing I would want to do, it sounds actually horrible to my ears.

thats why I never ever cut out the Mids and try not to have too less Treble and try to tell bandmates not do do it...and reduce gain...

 

[Joe Bfstplk]

I haven't actually tried this in the Axe, but tilt EQ is common for this.

Here's my block:

69-8600_PEQ (use 'save as' to download)

I set low and high blocking to allow the full range of guitar tuned to Eb, more or less. Here's the curve, with 'flat' overlayed by min and max:

 

[Joe Bfstplk]

thats why I never ever cut out the Mids and try not to have too less Treble and try to tell bandmates not do do it...and reduce gain...

Yeah, scooping the mids a little in post is ok if you are boosting the living daylights out of them at the amp input to drive and saturate more in that range. That's the trick with the Mark series Boogies - they are middy as all hell with the graphic switched off. Switch it on and scoop out a bit, boost the lows and upper mids a little, and it fills out enough to sound good. Plenty of room on the sliders to FUBAR it, though. Maybe that's why the EQ taper is non-linear, and rather slow near the 0dB line (per a statement by Cliff on why the 5-band slider positions don't match the real amp exactly) - so it is less likely for an end-user to boost so much that you FUBAR your tone....

 

[fractalz]

If you can find the stems from the rock band video game series, you can build a ton of "minus guitar" mixes to jam with.

 

[jon]

Are you using high/low cuts or just bmt?

With the axe I always recommend using cuts

EQ as well is an invaluable tool in the axe

After you dial in a good basic tone with BMT, play with the band and start using cuts till it sounds right. Sometimes I cut as much as 200-300hz out! But usually a cut of 80-120 will fix a lot of problems. Vocals tend to to be somewhere in the 1.2-2.5 khz range, so a slight cut or notch there can help too. Usually high cut around 2.5 to 8k is used, I would start around 8k and go down till it sounds right or starts killing your tone - it will help a LOT with ear fatigue too

The more instruments you have is likely the more cuts to make, and your singer's voice might also dictate how you adjust your highs, for eg an airy female singer might benefit from you cutting out most of your highs