The Guitar Tone and Mix Thread

Nothing wrong with that Chili. What are you using?

The left channel guitar is my GF tele through the UAD Vintage room plug using the Fender amp sim. I used the bridge pickup. I bumped up the amp knobs to near max then ran it through a Fairchild compressor plug. EMT 140 for reverb.
The right channel guitar is the same guitar and amp settings but with both pickups on the tele. Both pickups make a big difference in tone from using just the bridge pickup.
The middle guitar is a GF strat using the same Fender amp sim but with less gain.

Bass is a home built through a UAD Ampeg plug

Then there is a banjo in there somewhere.
:D
 
Yeah, EZ's a pretty good drummer, especially for a bass player, but I didn't know you two were tight. He usually doesn't cozy up to the mods. :D

That EZ and I get along well. In fact, we met in person and enjoyed a few beers together. I would tip a beer with him any day. But I didn't know he played drums.
 
That EZ and I get along well. In fact, we met in person and enjoyed a few beers together. I would tip a beer with him any day. But I didn't know he played drums.

I saw him sit in on drums at a JF. He was pretty darn good.
 
Here's an experiment I did a couple of years back. The song is called Crop Circles and is currently up at the Mp3Clinic. The song has a lot of layering of guitars. I was looking for an ethereal vibe and playing with tap tempos and note subdivisions on my TC Electronics Flashback, which was new to me at the time.

Best I can remember, these clips were recorded with a Les Paul and an SG through my Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18. I had the Flashback in the FX loop of the amp. One of the stereo returns from the pedal was going back into the amp, while the other return was going directly to a track in Reaper. I was miking the cab to a second track in Reaper, panned opposite.

Results were weird, but seemed to fit into this particular song. The direct signal from the delay pedal has a tinny tone (and might be clipping in one or two places... :eek: ), but since it's on a separate track I can blend it lower. There were some strange oscillations between the delays on the two tracks.

Here are several clips then an excerpt from the song to show how they blend into the full mix.

Anyway, interesting experiment. I haven't done it since, but it might be worth refining. Definitely would want to get a better tone on direct signal coming from the delay pedal. I wonder if a direct box would help.

Crops Circles Guitar Tones.mp3 - Google Drive
 
Some of the parts sound a bit muffled, some sound a bit distorted and fizzy, but the whole sounds wonderful. It just shows it's not the parts, but the sum of the parts that count.
 
Telecaster and Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18

I auditioned the Tubemeister 18 for a cleanish rhythm part of a song. Here's the result.

The meister has a different voice from that of the Mesa 5:25 that I've been using a lot lately. It has a brighter clean tone, with a strong midrange like a Vox, not scooped like a Fender. It doesn't have that chimey, shimmery thing that a Vox has. It's a detailed sound. You can hear individual strings in chords. It's got a straightforward tone, not complex like a Fender or Vox. Its the Telecaster of the amp world. A super useful amp for the money, and fetching too!

Hughes and Kettner Tubemeister 18.jpg

The guitar is a bright sounding ash Tele. I'm playing on the 18 watt setting, drive channel with master dimed and gain dialed back. The cab is a closed back Mesa 1x12 with a Vintage 30. I was using my new Sennheiser e906, on-axis, set just outside the dust cap and about an inch out from the grille. I tracked delay using the Memory Boy and TC Flashback. It was loud, but as usual I was in another room monitoring through studio speakers.

I doubled tracked the guitars and panned them opposite. First the guitars alone, then the mix. Music starts at 0:09.

TE_HK_906 tone clips.mp3 - Google Drive
 
Last edited:
Back
Top