getting that beefy guitar sound (home studio, lo-so)

[501]

Hi everyone,

New member here, joining the club of audioholics.

I'm looking for advice to beefen up my 6-string recordings. I mostly write club music of various sorts and I tend to add licks and riffs (mostly clean, not much distorted stuff) here and there if the sonic character of the recording permits it.

I'm not using any amplifying system, I just stick the plug from my old beloved Warmoth to an fx unit (pod or korg) and then route the signal through m-audio pre to TC's Konnekt Live sound card. I'm mostly recording mono.

What is missing is the beef. I would like to get the guitars to sound consistent and weighty without mudding up the mix. Currently the sound is a little bit hissy and quite snappy.

Any pointers as to where to begin? Something wrong with the signal chain? Mono/Stereo? Any recomendations concerning compression settings/signal processing?

Thanks,

J

[bryancook]

Originally Posted by 501

Hi everyone,

New member here, joining the club of audioholics.

I'm looking for advice to beefen up my 6-string recordings. I mostly write club music of various sorts and I tend to add licks and riffs (mostly clean, not much distorted stuff) here and there if the sonic character of the recording permits it.

I'm not using any amplifying system, I just stick the plug from my old beloved Warmoth to an fx unit (pod or korg) and then route the signal through m-audio pre to TC's Konnekt Live sound card. I'm mostly recording mono.

What is missing is the beef. I would like to get the guitars to sound consistent and weighty without mudding up the mix. Currently the sound is a little bit hissy and quite snappy.

Any pointers as to where to begin? Something wrong with the signal chain? Mono/Stereo? Any recomendations concerning compression settings/signal processing?

Thanks,

J

i'm sure many people will respond similarly but integrating the bass guitar into the same patterns with similar roots (or inverting guitars so they don't have the same root) will beef your guitars. in fact, you could hipass filter guitars at 80hz or even 100hz depending on the bass. they need to work together and compliment each other.

compression is a bit of an oxymoron when it comes to heavy distorted guitar. distortion is the most insane compression ever. and as far as mono or stereo... stereo would really only come from delay, reverb or chorus. so it depends on the style of of music and if it calls for that vibe. i prefer to get my stereo out of multiple performances that may or may not be in different octaves/positions or guitars/amps...

just my $.02

[501]

thanks a lot for replying bryan,

what you said makes a lot of sense now. the urge of getting that in your face sound usually clouds up judgement fairly easily.

What I ended up doing in the end, is I bought the Line 6 pod x3 pro. It seems to do a great job on guitars so long as you know the sound you're looking for. It's given me a lot of positive surprises (tracking is easy when the guitars sit well in the mix straight through the box). Of course this happens not so often, but its a huge improvement to where I was before.

Now, the only downside to having the x3 pro is that I should seriously spend more time tweaking and building up a catalogue of presets of my own!

After taking a critical look at my past work, I now try to keep focus on what sort of a sound I'm looking for and not begin dwelling on ideas of how to keep building bigger and bigger sounds. That might have been my initial problem...