Bad Guitar Tone

MONTE

MONTE

New member
I'm in the middle of mixing a live project and the guitar tone is "less than adequate" (putting it nicely). Basically, it's EXTREMELY "middy" and sounds like it was recorded through a telephone.
In an ideal situation, I would retrack it (by the way, I did not record it or I would have fixed it prior to tracking). For reasons I won't go into, it CAN NOT be retracked. I have to make it useable.
I've tried various EQ plugins and when trying to get the frequencies necessary to fill out the guitar sound, things just get muddy, noisy, and "phasy" because of how radical the EQ needs to be. I also do not have a DI track directly from the guitar to deal with.
I'm wondering about reamping it even though that's generally done from a direct line, or if anybody has any ideas- maybe modeling, etc.? I've run out of ideas myself and my deadline to finish the project is rapidly approaching. I'll try ANYTHING! Thanks in advance to any and all who chime in here. Your thoughts will be greatly appreciated.
 
Try re-amping. It can't hurt. However, as punk producer Pat Kim once told me, you can polish a turd forever and all you'll end up with is shiney shit...............
 
Talldog said:
Try re-amping. It can't hurt. However, as punk producer Pat Kim once told me, you can polish a turd forever and all you'll end up with is shiney shit...............
Click to expand...


shiny shit...you mean like a beatnik termites record?

KIDDING! KIDDING! that was a joke. had to take it for old punk rock's sake. :-) i just mixed something for an old bass player of theirs....hoo heee har.

to the OP: i reamp non DI guitars (miced) all the time. it can help...i sometimes mix a muddy reamped track in with a brighter track.
i'd have a hard time saying what frequency to cut...but telephone to me sounds like 1-3K...boosting 200-600.

Mike
 
Good Luck

I have had to do this before as well. The only thing that worked for me was to stay up late and eq it as best i could. Tried reamping but it made the track sound even more muddy. Good Luck!!
 
In case anyone cares (maybe someone else will run into this), I ended up using a 20ms track double leaving one side dry and the delayed signal to the opposite side. Each side was panned out about 3/4. It "thickened" the guitar up quite a bit and allowed me to use less radical EQ. There was still some hefty EQ'ing required, but not nearly as much as earlier attempts. Thanks all for your help!
 
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