Lend me your electric guitar ears!

guitarhunny

guitarhunny

New member
I am mixing an album for a local progressive rock band but the guitars seem very lack luster and lifeless. I would love some input for my tired ears.

The backing drum track is a scratch track. Guitars were recorded on a Peavey amp with an SM57 & a Fathead Ribbon through a Presonus ADL600 Pre, into a digi002. SM57 Track is at dead center. The ribbon mic track has been doubled, nudged and panned far left & right. Not much EQ has been applied, just a slight HP filter from about 50 with some compression. Is there a way to ease it out of the way a bit or am I better off just re-tracking? Any ideas/comments are welcome.
 

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I don't have the greatest ears in the world, but it sounds to me like the guitars weren't close mic'ed, which could make all the difference.
 
"The ribbon mic track has been doubled, nudged and panned far left & right"

That will seem to give a width to the track initially, but will also make the guitars seem 'out of front' due to the comb filtering caused by the effect. I would recommend spending more time on mic placement for a single track. Then playing/recording it twice.

Not having a viable drum/bass track, will make it tough to make judgments as to how the guitars will work in the whole mix. I would suggest getting good drums at least in there, before making final judgements on guitar tone, unless you know where you are headed. Seems not if you are asking now.

Just my opinion. :)
 
YellowDwarf said:
I don't have the greatest ears in the world, but it sounds to me like the guitars weren't close mic'ed, which could make all the difference.
Click to expand...

In other words, you're getting too much reverb in your recorded sound (from what I can hear). Reverb is going to pull the sound way back and make it sound distant and unfocused. Try close micing it without using any reverb on the amp and no (what appears to be) chorus effect on the amp. Just the dry signal. Typically, my mic is either right against the grille or up to 4 inches away from it. I've never needed more space than that to get a decent guitar sound.
You might also just be getting too much low end... My guitar sounds sucked when I first started recording because I heard a good place to start micing a guitar amp is off to the edge of the cone right against the grille, which is the bassiest place you can put it.
Just try moving the mic around and try not to use any effects until it gets to your DAW; maybe you'll find out the problem by doing that.
 
I've also had alot of sucess sending the output of guitar tracks to a single guitar bus, compressing with a LA-2A compressor for around 5db of reduction (assuming there's no comp running as an insert on the tracks) and then boosting 4.5-4.8kHz by say 4db to get some added bite.
 
TPeroda85 said:
I've also had alot of sucess sending the output of guitar tracks to a single guitar bus, compressing with a LA-2A compressor for around 5db of reduction (assuming there's no comp running as an insert on the tracks) and then boosting 4.5-4.8kHz by say 4db to get some added bite.
Click to expand...

Yowza. I dunno about the OP, but not all of us have a spare $3500 to drop on a compressor to make our guitar tracks sound good. xD
I usually don't run my guitar tracks through a compressor unless they're clean... Distorted guitars are already fairly remarkably compressed already.
I see you set a HPF at around 50 Hz... I tend to like to go a little higher than that, as it tightens up the guitar sound and leaves a lot more space for the bass guitar. I've seen an engineer that set a HPF on his guitars at around 250 with an 18 dB/octave roll-off, and in the context of the mix, it actually sounded rather decent.
 
Sorry, I was assuming the OP was mixing in the box and would some sort of compressor to run on a guitar bus within a DAW, I definitely don't have $3500 for an outboard compressor. The trick i was talking about I do within a DAW, not with outboard gear.

Sorry I wasn't clear!
 
TPeroda85 said:
Sorry, I was assuming the OP was mixing in the box and would some sort of compressor to run on a guitar bus within a DAW, I definitely don't have $3500 for an outboard compressor. The trick i was talking about I do within a DAW, not with outboard gear.

Sorry I wasn't clear!
Click to expand...

This was exactly my first thought as I use the UAD LA2A a bit :-) I know it's no real LA2A, but it does work quite well. As MrWrenchy pointed out, distorted guitars are inherently 'compressed', but the LA2A is very good for lightly shaving off the tops - fixed 2:1 ratio with fixed attack and release that are not really all that fast by todays plugin standards :-)
 
1. Dial in amp.
2. Put sm57 mic 1-2" from the grill at the edge of the dust cap on axis
3. Play derpy derp riffs.
4. Profit?
 
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