Getting Detail out of Distorted Guitar

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Nola

Nola

Well-known member
hi everyone.

I recorded a very distorted guitar part tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to mix it, but I noticed right away the challenge will be getting detail out of the distortion. Are they mutually exclusive or is there a trick to get the detail out of the distorted guitar? It's like a very distorted A chord and I go up and play the F# note, and you can barely hear the F# b/c of all the distortion. I use amp sims so it's basically a DI signal that I can manipulate. My guess is EQ is the tool for this but I'll be curious to hear if there's some other tool or trick to this.

thanks
 
A lot depends on the guitar and pickups.
Some turn to mush as the gain goes up.
In high gain settings there are pups that will retain that individual note clarity and ones that won't.

Fix the source before going farther down the recording chain.
 
Thanks rfr.
It's a strat with the 3 single coil pickups if that helps.
 
I've found that if you back off the gain until the distortion is crunchy instead of fuzzy, and then use a compressor sustainer pedal sim to bring back the sustain, you will usually be in good shape.
 
Nola said:
Thanks rfr.
It's a strat with the 3 single coil pickups if that helps.
Click to expand...
Not really. Which of the five switch positions did you use? Unless you played through the bridge pickup (and really even then) it's possible you're just pushing too much low end into the distortion, this cause a lot of the generated harmonics to splatter across the first octave or two up from the fundamental, which is where we "look" for information about exactly what notes are happening, but since it's all clogged with complex relationships, it starts to sound more like noise than actual tuned music. This is a large part of the reason so many of today's metal dudes are digging sticking a TubeScreamer in front of their high gain amps. The Screamer cuts a bunch of bass, which weights the distortion byproducts up higher, and leaves more of that fundamental area a bit cleaner, and ends up sounding tighter, more focused, and more detailed.

Are you actually playing full chords through heavy distortion and wondering why it's turning into a mess? When you play this F#, is it all by itself, or on top of that big A chord? There's a very good reason that most people who use lots of distortion (metal, etc) play mostly power chords. It's called inter-modulation distortion and is a direct result of the mathematical relationship between the notes you're playing. Octaves come through cleanest - sometimes almost too clean. Fifths are next. Thirds (minor or major) get messy, and a triad (major or minor) actually includes both a major and a minor third interval within them, so that's like six times as bad. A major sixth (F# over an A chord) by itself is bad but not horrible, but it's a second away from the fifth of the chord, which is the second most dissonant interval on the fretboard.

So the first thing to do is re-think the actual part. Pull out the thirds, and stop the other strings when you hit that F#. Split some things out to another guitar part if you think you must.

Then maybe cut some bass going into the amp. Grab a low shelf and play with the settings until it clears up a bit.

Then look at cutting back some of the gain/distortion, or maybe think about splitting the guitar track to a second, somewhat cleaner amp sim and mixing them to get what you're looking for.
 
hey ashcat. i used the middle pickup and played the A chord as A(open), E, A, then added the F# to replace the E. First position A chord.

I am going to try what fairview said about the compressor and also your tips and see how it goes. It's okay to compress overdriven guitar? That was actually another question I had and forgot to ask. But since I read distortion compressed it naturally, I was wondering if you can still use a compressor on it. Also, does recording it DI into a sim change how I'd compress it? Like would I put the compressor first in the chain on the clean signal, then add the distortion down the road?

I did have the gain all the way up, which usually sounds bad, but on this particular sim it sounded pretty good and smooth instead of awful and fizzy, so I wanted to use that setting. But I will mess around with it now that I have some ideas. thanks
 
My limited experience is:

Use a clean channel on your amp.

On my Marshall, gain about 12:00, Master wherever it starts to make noise but not too loud for the wife. Usually 10:00
Treble - 10 o'clock, Bass 12:00, Middle 1:00 Presence - off
Now on my buddy's Marshall the gain on his clean channel is best at 9:00, otherwise it's too fizzy. So you can see it all varies on the amp.

I have a an old rack pedal board by Boss/Roland. I built a bunch of patches, but for overdrive:
Compressor - about 30%
Overdrive - 30%
Overdrive tone - back it off a bit
3 band EQ - drop the highs about 15%, mids and bass leave as is
Delay - subtle at about 250ms and just enough of the other knobs to hear it barely and one repeat.

If you listen to the tone on my MP3 clinic tune it's this setting on middle pickup of my EC Strat (which has Gold Lace Sensors)
But I can get the same sort of tone out of my buddy's AM Dlx Strat which uses N3 middle pickup.

My advice is sit down next to your amp and pedals and fiddle until you get the tone you like.
Usually only takes an hour if you're starting from scratch.

Once it's dialed in take note of the setings using your phone's camera lol....
 
Just for clarity, the compressor/sustainer goes before the amp sim. It will be hard to get a normal compressor to work like a sustainer pedal, which is perfect tool for the job. Basically, you want high ratio, low threshold and a good deal of makeup gain, if you are using a normal compressor.

The idea is to turn the gain on the amp sim down to where it is crunchy when you pick the note, but falls out of distortion on the sustain. Then you use the sustainer to keep the signal level of the guitar in the distortion zone of the amp sim.
 
ido1957 said:
My limited experience is:

Use a clean channel on your amp.

On my Marshall, gain about 12:00, Master wherever it starts to make noise but not too loud for the wife. Usually 10:00
Treble - 10 o'clock, Bass 12:00, Middle 1:00 Presence - off
Now on my buddy's Marshall the gain on his clean channel is best at 9:00, otherwise it's too fizzy. So you can see it all varies on the amp.

I have a an old rack pedal board by Boss/Roland. I built a bunch of patches, but for overdrive:
Compressor - about 30%
Overdrive - 30%
Overdrive tone - back it off a bit
3 band EQ - drop the highs about 15%, mids and bass leave as is
Delay - subtle at about 250ms and just enough of the other knobs to hear it barely and one repeat.

If you listen to the tone on my MP3 clinic tune it's this setting on middle pickup of my EC Strat (which has Gold Lace Sensors)
But I can get the same sort of tone out of my buddy's AM Dlx Strat which uses N3 middle pickup.

My advice is sit down next to your amp and pedals and fiddle until you get the tone you like.
Usually only takes an hour if you're starting from scratch.

Once it's dialed in take note of the setings using your phone's camera lol....
Click to expand...

You didn't notice that he is using amp sims, not a real amp.
 
getting clarity, with electric guitars, always starts with the player,
and how they play.
the strum, attack, timing, all that is what makes clarity to start with.

then, just don't crap all over it with crummy amplifier eq and gain choices.....

then, it's just a matter of capturing the sound coming off the speaker with a good mic and good gain structure choices.

it should be that simple.


when i use my Palmer PDI-09 to capture some of my tracks,
i get the most clarity of all...
but then have to eq the track (usually with cuts only) to get it sit just right.

but that's not really about clarity,
that's more about tone, and what works for the track.
 
thanks guys i think i got an acceptable result now. not perfect but it's acceptable.

fairview, i wound up putting the compressor after the amp sims. for some reason i thought it sounded better there, though i'm not sure what the (technical) difference was vs putting it before.
 
i'd trade the sims, for a real amp.
it's just a no brainer.
 
Nola said:
thanks guys i think i got an acceptable result now. not perfect but it's acceptable.

fairview, i wound up putting the compressor after the amp sims. for some reason i thought it sounded better there, though i'm not sure what the (technical) difference was vs putting it before.
Click to expand...

With the compressor before the sim, you are compressing the clean signal, which will affect how the amp sim distorts. Putting the compressor after the sim just compresses the distorted signal.

Again, a compressor isn't really the right tool for the job, a sustainer is.

And it's FARview, not fairview.
 
If you are using amp sims then record the track as a clean guitar. Then copy the track and add distortion to one of them and mix the clean track in for definition.
 
ocnor said:
If you are using amp sims then record the track as a clean guitar. Then copy the track and add distortion to one of them and mix the clean track in for definition.
Click to expand...
Ewww. Run a copy through a clean amp sim like I said above.

Or distort the whole damn thing even more and embrace the elegant destruction.

The compressor after the sim can work to bring out the attack of the notes, but only if there's some break between them. Before the amp will do the opposite, but I think Farview's point was to be able to then turn down the gain so that everything is a bit cleaner. Straight in, the sustain portion of the notes might be a little too clean now, so add the comp/sustainer to push it a little further into the mush.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Ewww. Run a copy through a clean amp sim like I said above.
Click to expand...

What I meant to say is that you would run the clean track through a clean/cleanish amp sim. Then blend them to taste. Layering guitar tracks is common practice.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Before the amp will do the opposite, but I think Farview's point was to be able to then turn down the gain so that everything is a bit cleaner. Straight in, the sustain portion of the notes might be a little too clean now, so add the comp/sustainer to push it a little further into the mush.
Click to expand...
Exactly. The sustainer is there to keep the level in the crunch zone without it getting too mushy or falling out of the distortion.
 
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