Let us show you. Treble, middle, bass. That’s it, right? I mean, when you’ve got three knobs to work with, how hard can it really be to dial in an incredible guitar tone ? In a word: excessively. Getting that amazing guitar tone you hear in your head is so much more complex and nuanced than that, and dialing in such professional sounds takes years of honing your ear and developing your skills… … but it doesn’t have to be that way. Whether you’re using a tube amp or a digital modeler, the biggest obstacle in your path is not years of tedious tweaking and $10, 000 worth of equipment, but the knowledge that those years of experience and experimentation impart upon so many great guitarists: knowing what to look for, and knowing how to fix it. Before We Start… Before we get into the core content of this article, we are obligated to remind everyone of the most basic principle of life (and guitar tone): you can’t polish a turd . You can’t make muddy pickups sound clear and articulate. You can’t make a cheap 5 watt solid state practice amp sound like a screaming Soldano. You can’t make a blown out 1×12 cab sound like a tight, punchy Mesa 4×12. Before you try and get amazing guitar tones, you need to make sure your setup has the potential to sound amazing. This goes for both your gear, and your playing. Once you’ve got your ducks in a row, we can then start our journey! 1) What Are We Trying To Achieve? We can’t get “that tone” without knowing what “that tone” sounds like. So what does a great guitar tone sound like? What do all legendary heavy guitar tones have in common? Whether it’s a scooped, old school death metal sound, or a modern, tight, mid-heavy djent tone, they all: – Have a balanced frequency spectrum – Blend well with other instruments, especially bass – Have some amount of clarity and note definition
That’s really all there is to it. It seems too good to be true, but we’ll show you what to listen for, and how to make the tones in your head a reality. Let’s dig in. 2) Start With The Basics: Amp and Cab Before diving in, we have to start with the basics. It’s easy to be unhappy with our tone shortly into tweaking and decide that adding more gear will make things better, but that’s the worst thing we could do! Start with your amp, and your cab. Nothing else . Put aside your overdrive, your compressor, your noise gates, your graphic EQ, your “secret weapon” clean boost pedal. We’ve got to get as close as we can to the tone we want with just the basics. This has two benefits, the first is that we can focus on getting things right at the source, so we can then enhance that core tone with many of the elements we’ve just listed. The second is that we can help isolate the weakest links in our chain, and find out if the amp or cab we’re using is the reason we aren’t happy with the tone. 3) Picking An Amp A key component when choosing your gear is the genre you are playing. If you’re playing sludgy doom metal, it probably doesn’t make much sense to reach for an extremely tight and articulate Peavey 5150. Likewise, if you’re playing technical death metal, it might not be the best idea to reach for a saggy and fairly low gain Marshall JCM 800. Your genre is going to dictate your gear choices to a certain extent. These are not hard rules, but the viability of certain pieces of gear is going to be dependent on the goals that each genre has for guitar tone. Generally speaking, you’re going to want to reach for an amp that will get you enough gain without the use of a boost pedal. The reason behind this is surprisingly obvious: because high gain amps are tailored to high gain music. They were built with lots of drive in mind, so they have worked to make sure you still have punch and clarity even when the gain is on 11. That being said, this is just a guideline to keep in mind, not a hard rule. 4) Picking A Cab When looking for a complementary cab (or IR) many of us have limited choices, but for those who do have options, it’s smart to start with a matching cab if possible. We use a matching cab (a Mesa Recto cab with a Mesa Dual Rectifier, for example) as our starting point for the same reason we suggest reaching for high gain amps: they are designed for that purpose. Manufacturers design their amps and cabs to work together, and to sound their best when using matched gear.
If a matched pair isn’t doing quite what you want, start looking at other popular choices within your genre. Your next move will depend on how close you are to the tone you want. If you’re really close to what you want, try a cab with the same speakers but different brand or size. If you’re way off, go for something with completely different speakers. Maybe even try something with different construction, like an open back instead of a closed back.
Mixing Death Metal
(Side note: Micing a cabinet is also really important in getting the recorded sound you want. Be sure to check out our 5 Beginner’s Tips for Micing a Cabinet.)
5) Finding The Optimal Gain Settings The first step is to find the right gain setting. We turn up the gain in order to make our guitar sound aggressive, but there is such thing as “too much.” If your gain is too high, your tone gets muddy and fizzy – it loses definition and punch. So where’s that sweet spot? Start with the gain off, and slowly start turning it up. There’s going to be a point at which you hit “playable gain.” This is the point where you’ve got just enough compression and sustain from the distortion that you don’t feel like you’re missing notes, or that the dynamics are too varied to be workable. The is the beginning of our “useable gain range” . Once you reach this point, take note of it and then start going a bit further. You’ll start to hear added grind and aggression to your tone, where you’ve still got a workable amount of punch and clarity. At a certain point, you’ll hit the upper limit of our useable gain range. You’ll start to find that there’s no dynamics, no low-mid punch, and clarity and not definition start to disappear. The sound doesn’t get any more aggressive, but instead becomes muddy and fizzy, turning into an undefined mess. Between these two points is where our “useable gain range” is, and it’s up to you to decide where your tone sits in that range. Lower gain will give you an articulate, punchy, and organic tone. Higher gain will give you a grindy, harmonically dense, and more aggressive tone. The “sweet spot” here is different for every tone, and every scenario. 6) Tone Carving Now we get to the good stuff! Start with all your EQ controls at zero. This way we have a blank slate to work from, a completely fresh start. Getting a “balanced” tone means that there’s not too much or too little of anything – treble, mids, or bass. It’s important to note that you should be listening at the volume you intend to be playing it. Our ears interpret sound differently based on the volume of that sound . If it’s louder, our ears tell our brains that there’s more bass and treble, and less when it’s quieter. This is a big part of why we love to turn our music up loud! It’s also the reason that your “killer tone” you dialled in at home in your bedroom ends up sounding like a fizzy, muddy mess on stage! This also applies to the studio, tweaking your tone quietly will have the same results when you turn up your mix really loud and hear what an ear-sore it has become. Mind your ears, we don’t want to do damage to them, but we do need to get that volume to a decent level. Because guitars are a mid range instrument, your mids are a good place to start. Figure out where your mids need to be, if it should extremely up front and almost nasally, or very scooped and hollow sounding. Slowly bring up the mids knob until you’re happy, then start to build the rest of your tone around that. Start bringing up the bass knob until you fill out the sound – it has a nice full bottom end, but doesn’t get muddy or too loose and slow to react. The treble should be brought up to bring bite, aggression, and clarity to the sound without getting harsh or
(Side note: Micing a cabinet is also really important in getting the recorded sound you want. Be sure to check out our 5 Beginner’s Tips for Micing a Cabinet.)
5) Finding The Optimal Gain Settings The first step is to find the right gain setting. We turn up the gain in order to make our guitar sound aggressive, but there is such thing as “too much.” If your gain is too high, your tone gets muddy and fizzy – it loses definition and punch. So where’s that sweet spot? Start with the gain off, and slowly start turning it up. There’s going to be a point at which you hit “playable gain.” This is the point where you’ve got just enough compression and sustain from the distortion that you don’t feel like you’re missing notes, or that the dynamics are too varied to be workable. The is the beginning of our “useable gain range” . Once you reach this point, take note of it and then start going a bit further. You’ll start to hear added grind and aggression to your tone, where you’ve still got a workable amount of punch and clarity. At a certain point, you’ll hit the upper limit of our useable gain range. You’ll start to find that there’s no dynamics, no low-mid punch, and clarity and not definition start to disappear. The sound doesn’t get any more aggressive, but instead becomes muddy and fizzy, turning into an undefined mess. Between these two points is where our “useable gain range” is, and it’s up to you to decide where your tone sits in that range. Lower gain will give you an articulate, punchy, and organic tone. Higher gain will give you a grindy, harmonically dense, and more aggressive tone. The “sweet spot” here is different for every tone, and every scenario. 6) Tone Carving Now we get to the good stuff! Start with all your EQ controls at zero. This way we have a blank slate to work from, a completely fresh start. Getting a “balanced” tone means that there’s not too much or too little of anything – treble, mids, or bass. It’s important to note that you should be listening at the volume you intend to be playing it. Our ears interpret sound differently based on the volume of that sound . If it’s louder, our ears tell our brains that there’s more bass and treble, and less when it’s quieter. This is a big part of why we love to turn our music up loud! It’s also the reason that your “killer tone” you dialled in at home in your bedroom ends up sounding like a fizzy, muddy mess on stage! This also applies to the studio, tweaking your tone quietly will have the same results when you turn up your mix really loud and hear what an ear-sore it has become. Mind your ears, we don’t want to do damage to them, but we do need to get that volume to a decent level. Because guitars are a mid range instrument, your mids are a good place to start. Figure out where your mids need to be, if it should extremely up front and almost nasally, or very scooped and hollow sounding. Slowly bring up the mids knob until you’re happy, then start to build the rest of your tone around that. Start bringing up the bass knob until you fill out the sound – it has a nice full bottom end, but doesn’t get muddy or too loose and slow to react. The treble should be brought up to bring bite, aggression, and clarity to the sound without getting harsh or
(Side note: Micing a cabinet is also really important in getting the recorded sound you want. Be sure to check out our 5 Beginner’s Tips for Micing a Cabinet.)
5) Finding The Optimal Gain Settings The first step is to find the right gain setting. We turn up the gain in order to make our guitar sound aggressive, but there is such thing as “too much.” If your gain is too high, your tone gets muddy and fizzy – it loses definition and punch. So where’s that sweet spot? Start with the gain off, and slowly start turning it up. There’s going to be a point at which you hit “playable gain.” This is the point where you’ve got just enough compression and sustain from the distortion that you don’t feel like you’re missing notes, or that the dynamics are too varied to be workable. The is the beginning of our “useable gain range” . Once you reach this point, take note of it and then start going a bit further. You’ll start to hear added grind and aggression to your tone, where you’ve still got a workable amount of punch and clarity. At a certain point, you’ll hit the upper limit of our useable gain range. You’ll start to find that there’s no dynamics, no low-mid punch, and clarity and not definition start to disappear. The sound doesn’t get any more aggressive, but instead becomes muddy and fizzy, turning into an undefined mess. Between these two points is where our “useable gain range” is, and it’s up to you to decide where your tone sits in that range. Lower gain will give you an articulate, punchy, and organic tone. Higher gain will give you a grindy, harmonically dense, and more aggressive tone. The “sweet spot” here is different for every tone, and every scenario. 6) Tone Carving Now we get to the good stuff! Start with all your EQ controls at zero. This way we have a blank slate to work from, a completely fresh start. Getting a “balanced” tone means that there’s not too much or too little of anything – treble, mids, or bass. It’s important to note that you should be listening at the volume you intend to be playing it. Our ears interpret sound differently based on the volume of that sound . If it’s louder, our ears tell our brains that there’s more bass and treble, and less when it’s quieter. This is a big part of why we love to turn our music up loud! It’s also the reason that your “killer tone” you dialled in at home in your bedroom ends up sounding like a fizzy, muddy mess on stage! This also applies to the studio, tweaking your tone quietly will have the same results when you turn up your mix really loud and hear what an ear-sore it has become. Mind your ears, we don’t want to do damage to them, but we do need to get that volume to a decent level. Because guitars are a mid range instrument, your mids are a good place to start. Figure out where your mids need to be, if it should extremely up front and almost nasally, or very scooped and hollow sounding. Slowly bring up the mids knob until you’re happy, then start to build the rest of your tone around that. Start bringing up the bass knob until you fill out the sound – it has a nice full bottom end, but doesn’t get muddy or too loose and slow to react. The treble should be brought up to bring bite, aggression, and clarity to the sound without getting harsh or
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