Metallers: Everything OTHER THAN the Axe FX for your recorded tone

ToneLabRat

ToneLabRat

Experienced
Metal bros:

We spend so much time talking Axe FX - Let's discuss EVERYTHING AFTER the Axe FX that you use to generate a sick hi gain tone to your DAW in your signal chain such as post processing effects, recording strategies, effect/mastering plug ins, etc. What plug-ins do you use, where do you use them in the signal chain, why do you like them, other strategies and methodologies to generate the tone, etc.
 
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Why? There's no better way to get a High-Gain-Tone nailed to the board than using an Axe.....So I don't understand your Thread...
 
ToneLabRat said:
Metal bros:

We spend so much time talking Axe FX - Let's discuss everything OTHER THAN the Axe FX that you use to generate a sick hi gain tone
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I could, but it was stated that any discussion of any product that is in competition with the Axe FX is of bad taste... and the thread will be deleted. Happened to me 2 times already in this section.

Maybe amps are allowed, but not sure because real amps are in direct competition with the axe fx....right?
 
Almost everything I do to guitars in a mix falls into a couple of categories.

1. Filtering and EQ that rids especially double-tracked parts of unwanted resonance which harms the mix
2. Brings out the color of the guitars or places them in the mix better (i.e. improves stereo positioning or brings them forward or backward)

Basic filtering, some subtractive EQ, and maybe (big maybe) a touch of reverb on a send bus to give them a sense of space since the close-mic'ed IR is bone-dry. I am experimenting with some SSL-type limiting on my guitar bus, which can help the guitars come forward in the mix a little bit, but since I'm not dealing with real-world cabs and everything is pretty "idealized" in my recording chain, I rarely have problems cutting through a mix. If I am having problems cutting through the mix, I generally need to go back and look at my take and adjust some things in the preset. Remember that high gain guitars don't generally take well to tons of processing. They are basically super-compressed square-waves with a lot of harmonics, so mostly it's about getting them to "fit" into a mix, or "fitting' the mix around them.

So as far as mixing guitars goes, my chain is really simple:

1. Slate VCC (I like the SSL emulation on my guitars, maybe the Neve)
2. Logic stock EQ for filtering, maybe take out some low mids

Guitar Bus
1. Slate VCC Mix Bus (again SSL or Neve)
2. Maybe Slate VTM (and that's a big maybe)
3. Even "maybe-er" some limiting or very light compression. Maybe. Big maybe.

Now since I'm pretty sure what you are meaning to ask is "How do you guys get your guitars to sound so big and fat in a mix?" I will simply state, read as much as you possibly can about mixing heavy bass guitars. Pick up Erm's "The Systematic Mixing Guide" and read through it a good ten times and then read through it again. A whole lot more goes into mixing heavy bass than guitars, and my guitars sound like weak little kittens until I have a bass in the mix - even if it's buried pretty low and far back. I personally love bass guitar and it makes or breaks a hard rock mix. If it's not awesome, your mix will sound pathetic. If it's too much, your mix will also come apart. It's a lot harder to do effectively, but when you do - boy howdy it makes those guitars sound like wicked beasts! It's a really fun illusion game, actually.
 
nicolasrivera said:
I could, but it was stated that any discussion of any product that is in competition with the Axe FX is of bad taste... and the thread will be deleted. Happened to me 2 times already in this section.

Maybe amps are allowed, but not sure because real amps are in direct competition with the axe fx....right?
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I don't think that the OP was trying to say that he wants to know what we are using to generate tones other than the axe-fx II. I think what he means to ask is how we are going about mixing high gain guitar.
 
Speculum Speculorum said:
I don't think that the OP was trying to say that he wants to know what we are using to generate tones other than the axe-fx II. I think what he means to ask is how we are going about mixing high gain guitar.
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Its pretty clear to me..... "...Let's discuss everything OTHER THAN the Axe FX that you use to generate a sick hi gain tone"·
 
nicolasrivera said:
Its pretty clear to me..... "...Let's discuss everything OTHER THAN the Axe FX that you use to generate a sick hi gain tone"·
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Yeah but let me put this into perspective for you. A little while back ToneLabRat and I had a little exchange on a different thread about this very subject. I can assure you what he means is how you mix high gain guitars or what you do to them in the mix to make them sound "better".
 
ToneLabRat said:
Metal bros:

We spend so much time talking Axe FX - Let's discuss everything OTHER THAN the Axe FX that you use to generate a sick hi gain tone to your DAW in your signal chain. What plug-ins do you use, where do you use them in the signal chain, why do you like them, other strategies and methodologies to generate the tone, etc.
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Wow, relax bros. Did you guys read this part in my above post? I'm talking about plug ins, etc AFTER THE AXE FX. Thanks Spec - exactly right.
 
After the Axe-Fx, so you mean post-processing? FabFilter Pro-Q, because it can EQ mid/side-channels separately. For piezo-recordings, I also use any suitable compressor plugin (e.g. FabFilter Pro-C) and a de-esser (e.g. Pro-DS). No, I don't work for FabFilter, I just find them very easy to use.
 
nicolasrivera said:
I could, but it was stated that any discussion of any product that is in competition with the Axe FX is of bad taste... and the thread will be deleted. Happened to me 2 times already in this section.

Maybe amps are allowed, but not sure because real amps are in direct competition with the axe fx....right?
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Spot on Nick! :D Aww man I've taken a beating on this forum for both saying too much good and bad things about other modelers. I think the general consensus is that it's better to have those conversations in pther places where people aren't total FAS-whores. (I'm also one, not calling other people names. :D )

On topic: I like Overloud TH2. I honestly like it a whole lot. The modeling is "good enough" and you can use IR's in presets so it's like an Axe-Fx as a plugin. I re-amp all of my stuff through that and the cool thing is that I can actually change the IRs in real time in post processing so there's no "I should have used a different amp/cab/drive pedal etc.".

F.ex. I attended this mixing competition Ola put up and also sang the clean/high screams on top of the song and the guitars are reamped with Overloud TH2. I don't think it sounds like a modeler at all:



Line6 cabs are bad IMO. Actually anything on the market that can load custom IR's (except for that Digitech thingy) should get you almost whatever metal tone you want.
 
Interesting thread.

The only thing I do to the guitars is subtractive EQ which you can see in a few of my videos. It's a basic low/high pass with a dip at 2khz. I found that the dip at 2khz removes fizz. Some amps are more fizzy than others so I tweak accordingly. For heavy guitars that's pretty much it. Depending on the amp I'm using though I might use some light compression to even out the palm mutes from the "normal plucks" but that happens very rarely (it can be done using the amp compression knob in AE as well). If I'm doing some hard rock (ala AC/DC etc) I usually add a touch of reverb to make the guitars sound more lively, but that really depends on the vibe I'm going for.

The "secret" to a great heavy guitar tone - which Speculum mentioned and which I neglected for the longest time - is a great bass guitar tone that blends in with the heavy guitars. Seriously, I cannot point out enough how important the bass is to the guitars. Like I said I had neglected this for the longest time. Before I got really serious about recording and bought decent gear, I would only record guitars and they always sounded that something was missing. I'd dial a decent tone out of my GT-8 which would sound great (at least back then) while playing, but when I'd record with said tone, it just wouldn't sound as good.

Until... I started recording bass. It was one of those "aha!" moments. It was like finding the missing link to solving a puzzle. That's when the guitars started to sound close to what I always envisioned. Granted, my recording/mixing/mastering skills were pretty much at zero back then so I never really got the sound I had in my mind. Fast forward a few years later and after spending a lot of cash and buying a bunch of decent gear (AFX Ultra, FF800, decent monitors) along with hundreds of hours spent going after my dream sound, I was finally getting really close. The more I would delve into it, the more I would realize how freaking important this thing that I had neglected for so long is. Yep, the bass.

I pretty much came to the conclusion that most of the punch that a heavy guitar tone has, resides in the bass guitar rather than the guitar tone itself. This might be a bit of an exaggeration but honestly, after spending so long trying to get that dream sound, that is how I feel now. It's all about finding the right balance between the guitars and the bass. In the last few months, I feel that I kind of struck that balance and that I can finally be proud of my recordings/mixes and I love sharing them with y'all! :pride:

But the question still begs... What do you do with the bass if it's so important? It really depends on the guitar tone I'm going for. I have my basic bass preset (which you can download, link in sig ;)) and I tweak it for what I need.

To give you an example, on my most recent video covering Bullet Hole by The Haunted I went for a more gainy, almost distorted bass tone. I also compressed it pretty hard to give it a more even sound across the board. The reason for doing this is because the guitar parts play a lot of single notes thus they lack the bite you get from heavy chugs. During the verses you get the attack of the single notes by the guitars and you get the low end grind from the bass. Once it goes into the chorus, with the guitars chugging on the low E string along with power chords you can really hear how full the guitars sound. That "fullness" is the balance that I've mentioned before.

Another example would be my previous vid, LoG's Laid to Rest. I used the same preset for the guitars as the previous example (6505+) but dialed in a bit differently. I don't remember the exact settings I used for the bass but I do remember that it was a "cleaner" tone than the first example. I also used some post EQ to make it sit well in the mix. Why the "cleaner" tone though? Well, that song is FULL of chugs/palm mutes so I opted for that because it would be overbearing during those parts. There's also the part during the verse when the left guitar plays the main riff and the right guitar plays the melody. The main focus there is the melody so you don't really want a bass tone that will overshadow that.

Once again, the trick is to get the right balance. You don't want your bass to be way too upfront because then it will drown the guitars and will be overbearing. You also do not want your bass to be way in the back because your guitars will sound as thin as air. So in a nutshell, balance = key.

I just realized that this is a thread about guitars and I mostly talked about bass :lol I'm not an engineer or anything, just a bedroom guitarist who loves recording stuff like a lot of you so take this with a pinch of salt.

On a side note, this gives me some ideas on a series of videos that I plan to do at some point this year regarding making metulz and giving you insight to my inner workings. Don't wait for it though, I'm still taking a break from the high gain showcase vid, like no huge projects for a while :lol

I think I'm done for now, I hope this helps some of you.
 
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nicolasrivera said:
I could, but it was stated that any discussion of any product that is in competition with the Axe FX is of bad taste... and the thread will be deleted. Happened to me 2 times already in this section.

Maybe amps are allowed, but not sure because real amps are in direct competition with the axe fx....right?
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You misinterpreted my post. EDIT - I RE-READ MY POST - I SEE HOW IT COULD BE MISINTERPRETED - TO CLEAR IT UP: I was hoping to have a constructive and informative discussion about post processing stuff like EQ, compression, mixing, mastering plug ins, limiters, volume maximizers, etc. I am just getting my home studio engineering skills to the point where I'm ready to take this to the next level and there are a number of experienced guys in this regard on the board, a few of which I asked to contribute to the thread because I have read really helpful pointers from them in the past. There are SO many options out there, recommendations from experienced users is critical. Speculum Speculorum's above post is exactly what I was hoping for.
 
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Whew what a tough question, ToneLabRat! :) Thanks for inviting me to check this out.

Well, I have quite a few sides to my guitar processing. Sometimes I mic and use pre-amp DI's, other times I re-amp like crazy....but for myself, I like to keep things simple. I have tracks I've done for clients that have HUGE guitar tones. But for me, I'm not very fond of that. The reason being? I HATE and I emphasize HATE......when people create something that they can't pull off live. In all my years I've never done anything in the studio that I couldn't do live. From licks, to leads, to special effects, punch in errors that turned into "whoa that was sick!" to guitar tones. I've made a decent living on the two world-wide released CD's I put out (another coming soon) and the one thing people say is, I sound pretty much the same live as I do in the studio. So I like to keep that frame of mind always. People know when you are trying to be something you're not or when you try to pull the wool over their eyes. Metal/rock fans can't be fooled as easy as pop fans that think Autotune has something to do with automatically fixing their car. :)

So for me, it's get the tone you want BEFORE you record as the first step. Most of my recording (BA=Before AxeFx) has been done with my amps or my faithful 2101. I have gone to the extreme of mic'ing 2 complete stacks (yeah, what a day that was...but it sounded cool as heck!) and then thrown a 57 and a 421 on one cab while using the speaker sim XLR outs of the 2101 at the same time. No matter what I do, I sound like me so one day I said screw it....it is what it is. I don't mic my own stuff anymore because I can't tell the difference between my mic'd rig and using speaker sim.

The reason for that is I like to do what is called "a room within a room". Meaning, I try to simulate what happens between the mic and the speaker. You know that little pocket of air? That (along with the curve of the mic you use as well as the position for a phased effect if needed) is what creates a mic'd tone. We can do this with speaker sim and impulses. You just need to know what to listen for and how to go about it. Direct tones are just that...so direct there is no room ambiance at all. Now keep in mind, the tones of today do not use much room in the tone. They sound sort of direct, but you can just about always tell when someone mic'd up and someone DI'd. It's harder and harder to tell these days, but a mic on a cab gives you that pocket of air.

This is what I simulate with an impulse. From there, a small room impulse on top of it lightly blended in with some eq on the room and you have a tone that literally sounds more live without reverb/tail artifacts or sounding like you recorded in a big room with a wooden floor. We just want a little ambiance, not a tail or even the impact of knowing "we're in a room". This to me makes a huge impact on guitar sounds....and I've not even started to process anything yet. LOL! :) (you invited the wrong guy to this thread ToneLabRat hahaha)

Ok, so let's get to the good stuff. Once I have my sound the way I want it, I'll compress going to disc. Not much, but enough to where my wave form looks consistent, yet not like a square box. A light compression taking out about -2dB of gain...but not a constant. Meaning, I may see -2dB flash up periodically as I play on the outboard compressor....it's not a constant LED of -2dB. So now I have a good signal going to disc. I don't like to color anything with mic pre's or eq if I can help it. I am using a little pre in my console, but I'm barely touching it. I try to get my sound so tight that once it's recorded, there are only minimal things that need to be done to make it fit in a mix.

So I'm ready to record. I record my tracks and when I'm done, I'll create an instrument bus and add a compressor in my FX bin in Sonar X3. (Sonar lover here, sorry Cubase and PT guys lol) I'll send the two rhythm tracks I recorded to the instrument bus and I'll take out another -2db of gain using a UAD Precision Bus Compressor. This is one of the meanest little comps I've ever used for stacked guitars. This compressor will compress my two rhythm tracks as an entity and tighten them up. From here, the room within a room sound I created is in my fx return so I'll add just enough of that on each guitar track so that it opens up a bit. I allow the room sound to pick up the spacing in between the guitars. I'll explain...

Most guys run two guitars and pan them at 100L, 100R. When you do that...you leave the middle and sides out of the mix and depending on your sound/tone, you're leaving holes in the mix. Now granted, we know we have other instruments that need to be in those gaps....but we should be able to fill the gaps a little so we're not just on the ends of the stereo field. Me personally, I never go 100L/R because it's just too wide. Most people think the wider you go in a mix, the better it sounds. Though that may be true as a first impact, the truth is, you are separating your mix. Just like guys that pan drums all over....cymbals on the left, hats all the way on the right. You disconnected your drum kit. The tighter you keep your pans (I'm not saying go narrow and lifeless) the better your mix sounds because the instruments aren't as separated, understand? Your pans in a mix are just as important as the eq you use on each instrument. Anyway...sorry....I got a zillion things I want to talk about...trying to get a handle on just 2. LOL

So we have guitars panned at say, 90 for you guys that like wide pans. It would look like this...

L100<-----Guitar------------------------------------Center------------------------------------------------Guitar----->R-100

What *I* do is this....we add in the room sound I created, and we pan it more like 70% or wherever it sounds like the guitar pics up a little more "sound size" so to speak. So it would look like this now and sound like this.....

L100<-----Guitar-------------GRoom-----------------------Center---------------------GRoom---------------Guitar----->R-100

Now, you COULD just record another guitar there physically, and I do stuff like that when I want chorus parts in a song to stand out, but the room trick allows your guitar sound to expand and is still the same sound you started with. You could even clone a track and create a HAAS delay and use a stereo imager to place the sound wherever you want it.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about with the HAAS and the room within the room trick. I also added a slight chorus on this to make it a bit more authentic. (I grabbed this backer off some site...but all the guitars you hear are mine. 2 rhythm guitars here with room within a room, HAAS delay and chorus effect. Not too bad for only 2 guitars and a crappy 2101. Lead sound is one guitar tracked in stereo using a delay and a chorus)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4909348/CultExtremeTest.mp3

Ok, so we have that part...lol....one more little thing which I won't take too much time on. As I've mentioned, I beta test for quite a few companies. All sorts of software, drum products, guitar plugs etc. This is an amp I helped develop for Acme Bar Gig. We were calling it "Shred" for a while but wound up calling it "Head Case" since it has like 25 heads in it. Anyway, for this example, I used a VSTi I named "Skull Job" which of course you guys know, is the best "head" we can get. :) LOL! The amp looks like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4909348/DannySkullJob.jpg

Now this amp sim is a lot like our AxeFxII. It has input gain and is a really nice little rig. But it still needed a little something going in, so I ran a little compressor into it and just used the thing the way it was. I used the room within the room trick as well as the way I told you I use compression. The delay and all guitar effects you hear are inside the plug. This is what it sounds like: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4909348/Shred On II ABG Demo.mp3

So that's some of the things I do recording wise. I don't use anything else to push gain or color my sound. At the end of the day, no matter what I do...I sound like me. So I try to just get the best sounding "me" I can get. Hope this helps. :)
 
Now, that i understand your question, still have to say! that i'm not using ANY Kind of post Production tool for my guitars than Tracking it twice and Panning them left/right. I have spend a lot of time to get my sound Out of the Axe, so I leave them right how they are recorded. Earlier, I tended to work with the CLA-stuff from Waves, but the problem is, that it sounds Pretty awesome, but "hypes" the Sound in an unnatural way. Once you Start with the guitars, you want to hype all your Other Tracks in a similar way, and it ends in a Mix, where all instruments fight each other.

Post Production Tools like CLA or precision limiter are Great tools, but for certain important instruments like guitars I Double Track them and leave 'em alone. IMHO, it's more important to use Those tools for the bass, cause good High-Gain guitars without a solid sounding bassline don't really make the day (just listen to "Justice for all" from Metallica. Imagine, how good it would have sounded, if James and Lars would Not have turned the Bass down in the Mix.)
 
funkstation777 said:
Now, that i understand your question, still have to say! that i'm not using ANY Kind of post Production tool for my guitars than Tracking it twice and Panning them left/right. I have spend a lot of time to get my sound Out of the Axe, so I leave them right how they are recorded. Earlier, I tended to work with the CLA-stuff from Waves, but the problem is, that it sounds Pretty awesome, but "hypes" the Sound in an unnatural way. Once you Start with the guitars, you want to hype all your Other Tracks in a similar way, and it ends in a Mix, where all instruments fight each other.

Post Production Tools like CLA or precision limiter are Great tools, but for certain important instruments like guitars I Double Track them and leave 'em alone. IMHO, it's more important to use Those tools for the bass, cause good High-Gain guitars without a solid sounding bassline don't really make the day (just listen to "Justice for all" from Metallica. Imagine, how good it would have sounded, if James and Lars would Not have turned the Bass down in the Mix.)
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Sorry bro - my bad. Thanks.
 
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