EQing acoustic guitar

  • Thread starter Thread starter Drive All Day
  • Start date Start date
D

Drive All Day

New member
How do I make it sound awesome? I think Chris Walla has some kind of secret because all the stuff he's recorded sounds beyond awesome. It always sounds to thick and meaty (listen to the Decemberists to hear what I mean). At first I was sure it was the mics he used or something with the recording technique, and while I'm sure that's a big part of it, I think it has a great deal to do with the mixing because I was reviewing a record by a band called Rat Cat Hogan that clearly had a pretty low budget, but it was mixed (just mixed, not produced or engineered) By Chris Walla, and the acoustic sounded great. I'm thinking he was working some kind of EQ magic. any advice for mixing an acoustic guitar to get that thick, full bodied sound?

Thenkee thankee.
 
I think it all depends on the sound. You can try double tracking, or stereo mic'ing, and see if that beefs up your sound. Some eq might be necessary also. Her is a song I've been working on. It's actually a mixture of Stereo mic, and mono, with some chorus added. No eq, but some multiband compression.
The Electric Gumby
 
Getting a good sound at tracking is a must. If you can accomplish this I've always felt it opens up the guitar a little to use a high pass filter at approx. 90hz or so. I usually then use a parametric to dip a little at 100hz maybe .5db with a smaller q (2.8 or so) to compensate for the slight boost you get with the shelf. This also brings out the fundamentals of the guitar without having to boost yet. After that if things are a little too boomy a dip at 800hz or so can remove some of the excess "hole noise" depending on how you mic'ed the guitar. As far as boosts I've always liked to boost attack at 3khz 1.5 - 3 db (Q 1.4 - 2.8 or so). If you sweeten your vocals at this area this can be a problem though (usually I reserve 4 - 5khz for vocs with a narrow Q to compensate). Some like to hit the 12khz to 14khz area for some "icing" to bring the guitar higher in the mix. Depending on the song I've done some low boosts at 200 - 250hz & 400 - 450hz with a little wider Q (1.0 - 1.4) when the song called for a rich bottom. Doing this with a small 800hz cut with a wide Q and leaving everything alone above 3khz can give you a nice dark acoustic a.ka nirvana unplugged. Listen to the second disk from the foo fighters last CD to get an idea of what a heavier acoustic sounds like. If you need to give the guitar a little more presence in the mix refer to Ford Van's pitch shifting effect (Synthetic Eventide trick) that he posted a while back for vocs. Manipulations such as these can help in that area. (As for eq on this trick, shelving everything below 400hz on the pitch shifted tracks can help keep things from getting too muddy. It also helps to do this trick without eq on the pitch shifted tracks, reserving everything above for the "source" track). Hope all this helps. Just trying to give a little back for once. :cool:
 
thanks, dpreed1. I will pass that along to our "engineer"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top