Argh! My strat's too bassy!

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Drumparadise

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Hi y'all
I've been play guitar for about 4-5 years but I've been writing songs for about 10. I've had a number of pretty cheap strat copies in the past and when I've recorded them I've always been able to get quite a good sound (I use Cakewalk homestudio btw) For christmas I got a fender strat (my first top end guitar!) and it feels lovely to play. I tend to record alot of my songs clean first then I sometimes re-record them with dirty. I recorded my first song with this guitar the other day, and as per usual I recorded it clean first. The clean sound sounded beutiful, absolutly stunning and was pretty much perfectly EQed, but when I went to record it dirty all I got was bassy mush. I tried mic'ing up my amp in different ways by nothing I tried worked. Why would this be?

The guitar is freshly strung, I use a marshall valvestate amp (not the best but it does the job), A SM58 for guitar and vocals and a DJ mixer runing through a Soundblaster Live sound card and on to Cakewalk Homestudio. It's not the best studio in know, but it does the job for recording demos. So why does my strat sound so bloody bassy recorded when distorted?! It sounds fine in a live environment.

Help!!
 
Is the amp on the floor when you record? How are the room acoustics? Bass build up is usually an issue related to the room and where in the room you place your amp. Then there's many other issues associated with recording distorted guitars. Combine those two and you get lots of mud. Getting a good "heavy" sound is an art.

It may sound way too thin by itself, but for the distorted track try using the bridge pick up, and back way down on the amp's bass knob. Let the clean guitar track handle the bottom end.

Rez
 
hes right...the room and the altitude of the amp helps.
what i usually do is turn the bass down all the way down to a comfortable level. Have a bunch of sound checks. Also elevate the amp on a 45 degree angle on a high chair. Mic it straight up direct in the middle for clear highs. Turn your bass down and try that.
 
Two things to try.

Point the mic more towards the center of the speaker.
Use EQ to cut between 6dB and ten dB at around 80 to 120Hz.
 
Perhaps

You could mic the clean version and record the dirty direct? That might clean up some of the bass issues.
 
You might also want to use a high-pass filter to get rid of extra, bandwidth-hogging boom at the lower end. Some mixers provide this at input-signal level, and believe me, that can make a tremendous difference.

Contrary to common belief, the "heavy" sound is not produced by a guitar with heavy bass and distortion, but by correct mixing of guitars at the high end with bass and kickdrum at the lower end. Guitars and vocals are typically best recorded with the low end dumped right at the very beginning.

Try it - you will be amazed! :)
 
dinorocker said:
You might also want to use a high-pass filter to get rid of extra, bandwidth-hogging boom at the lower end.
Click to expand...

Bandwidth hogging? Headroom-hogging, maybe, but the bandwidth is detemined by the sampling rate and bit resolution and is independent of spectral content of the signal.
 
ggunn said:
Bandwidth hogging? Headroom-hogging, maybe, but the bandwidth is detemined by the sampling rate and bit resolution and is independent of spectral content of the signal.
Click to expand...

Argh - never answer questions in a sysadmin and audio forum at the same time, especially around midnight, your time! :)

Yes, headroom, not bandwidth.
 
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