Distorted guitar EQ - Guidelines

  • Thread starter Thread starter gusfmm
  • Start date Start date
More mids than you think you want.
Too much signal under 100Hz only works for certain kinds of music.
Too much signal over 10kHz will give people a headache.
 
1800 hz high-shelf for more or less crunch and treble.

1200 hz ; cut if guitar sounds thin. boost for greater definition.

700 hz; Just try it and see what it does. You may / may not like it. I think it almost always sounds cool to boost it. That's just me.

Cut 400 hz with a very wide Q factor. Unless it sucks. Then don't. :D Seriously, though, this is where the mud is.

250 hz is for some girth and bottom end for most electric guitar. Be careful -- this is really close to mud territory at 300 hz.
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
I'd rather get the right sound from the amp.
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Rokket said:
I second that!
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Just in case, the Mesa 20/20 is a tube power amp with merely presence and volume controls per channel. Just perfect as I like an amp to be.

So that's not an option.
 
You better make it an option or the guitar isn't going to sound good.

Where's your guitar amp preamp?
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
You better make it an option or the guitar isn't going to sound good.

Where's your guitar amp preamp?
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The link included in the original (first) posting describes it in detail. Also explains the reason for my question.

By the way, I tried Chessrock's suggestions and found one of them very helpful: Playing with that region at 700-800Hz, it was definitely the best of them all. Added quite more character and definition, using a rather high Q and boosting it a bit. Awesome, thanks.

I've also found out that boosting a bit at about 3kHz with a moderate bell has a very nice and defining effect. That'd be my 2 cents to this trend.
 
3khz boosts can tend to sound bad in a final mix though.
 
I find when i record distorted guitars i get a nasty harshness at 5k. What would i be doing wrong at source? Is 5k TREBLE or MIDDLE on an amp eq?
Should i maybe tone down the treble and boost the mid?
I have to cut alot of the hig end away so the distortion isnt so harsh and alot of the lo end so i dont get those unwanted bass muffles that overpower any mix.
 
5k would probably be treble. On my distorted guitars, i try and get the best sound out of the amp first of all, cut the real lows and real highs, then add just a tad bit of boost at 480 and 2k. This doesnt work with everything of course, just set your eq gain to about 5 and ride the frequency pot to find the sweet spot, and adjust accordingly.
 
gusfmm said:
By the way, I tried Chessrock's suggestions and found one of them very helpful: Playing with that region at 700-800Hz, it was definitely the best of them all. Added quite more character and definition, using a rather high Q and boosting it a bit. Awesome, thanks.
Click to expand...


The 700 hz boost is almost always a pretty rockin' effect on any distorted guitar. I don't know that it's always appropriate, but in some situations, it kicks some ass. I consider it an effect more than anything, since it can change the sound of the guitar drastically. Bump it up enough around 750 or so, and it'll sound like you're playing out of a pig nose.
 
Most guitar speakers start to dive bomb right around 6khz with a rolloff.

I find that the best amp settings are moderate ones. My typical amp setup is bass 3, mids 5, treble 4.5ish. Granted, I will *crank* the amp and run a Rat as a volume boost/slight distortion/slight filter rolloff in front of it.

As far as guitar is concerned 5khz is probably treble... but that's the upper mids in the audio spectrum.

3-5khz on guitar is a tough place to get just right. Sometimes rolling back your guitar's tone knob can help.
 
No EQ is the best option. You have a world of options by tweaking the amp, pick ups and mic placement.
 
This may not help you, but it might make you feel better.

Recording electric guitar tends to be one of the more challenging recording tasks, even for the professionals. There are some good suggestions here. Try and get the best sound you can out of your amp, then move on to miking. Find the mic position (it may be more than one mic) that best captures that tone that you worked on getting out of the amp. Finally, if need be eq it.

In my experience eq can dramatically change an electric guitar track. That can be good or bad. Just be careful not to lose sight of the overall picture.
 
Thanks all for the good advice and comments.

Playing with EQ is obviously an almost endless endeavour, you have myriads of possibilities and combinations. That's why I wanted to get a flavor of your "general" recommendations to have a point to depart from.

Thus far, I've found those two frequency ranges had a noticeable and "positive" impact in some of my distorted presets. The 7-800 range made it be a bit more tight w/o adding any rumble. The 2-3k gave it definitely more bite and a bit of definition without taking away the "tube flavor" of the sound. Several other frequencies I've tried around that range either considerably affected that flavor of added that awful higher freq harsh that steals the sweetness of the tone and that I'm sure won't help you AEs at all to get a good recorded result.

Yet, there is more tweaking I'll be doing and I'm sure adding a mic later on to the equation will contribute to make it even more complex and interesting.
 
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