Hey guys here is a Quick Guide I found on my computer hidden away in some folder I forgot existed I was about to delete for fear of it holding copious amounts of pR0n.
To my surprise and relief it just had this in it.

This is a Quick run down for those of you out there bashing your heads against a wall trying to get your guitar sound up to snuff.


• 22 to 70hz: Kill this shit, Do not need it.
• 70hz to 90hz: Good for chugging but DO NOT BOOST.
• 90hz to 180hz: AMAZING place to put a Waves C4 You need this section to be tight on rhythm guitars so for rhythm do not cut too much or your sound will be thin. Lead Gtrs Dont truly need it
• 180hz to 300hz: Room echoes, muddiness and resonance from Cheap-Guiatr/OLD STRINGS/Or crappy AMP. !DO NOT OVERDO IT HERE, taking out to much will kill your sound!
• 400hs to 500hz: MUD, MUD, MUD = CUT, CUT, CUT, but as I've said before NOT too much, ALL guitars live in the mids so keep in mind cutt only if truly needed or throw a C4 on that bitch!
• 500 to 800hz: This area makes guitars sound cheap and will fight with your snare. Once again Cut or C4 DO NOT BOOST!
• 2kHz to 4kHz: THIS is where your vocals live, but your guitars sound great here too, You need to find the perfect balance or else ALL IS LOST OH NOOOOESSSS!
• 4kHz+: HIZZING and fizzy stuff here, cut, but never cut more then 5 or 6db cus it will kill your sound and lead guitars will suffer.
• 10khz to 12khz to the moon: Don't really need it, like I've said before and before and before cut but not that much, add a lowpass starting from 10.5khz on down...er up. and all should be fine.


Keep in mind guys this is just a guideline, not scripture!

ALSO you NEED to know, your guitars are NOTHING without a bass guitar in terms of sound, never ever ever EQ your guitars without your bass track.
A godsend of knowledge that I was taught was:

If your guitars are sounding like shit, your bass is too low in the mix.

It rhymes and its fun to say, speak it, sing it, make fun of it, have sex with it, sleep and dream of it, LEARN it and NEVER EVER EVER EVER forget it.

Any questions guys just ask, I also have some personal run-downs of Metal/Rock/Whatever EQ guides I've made over the years if anyone's brain is itching for it just let me know!

Last thing this EQ graph was taken from another website a whileeee ago, but I re-wrote alot of the main points for myself, because I was mainly keeping these charts as reference for....well...myself But yea the only thing that ISNT of my fingers pecking the keyboard are the numbers and neat little dots.

 

Oops, One last thing.

It is always good practice when Eq'ing to...drumroll please...

Cut with small, and precise notches!
And boost with wide fat lady nipple sized ones!

Also, Do not Cut more then 9db unless it is really, really needed, and you know what your doing.
And by knowing what your doing I mean can deal with the phase issues it will cause and face it like a man made of steel who drinks pure virgin blood 24/7!
Or the plug your using says some B.S about it never letting phasing issues occur.


All jokes aside, Eq'ing is a real pain when your first starting out and my levity is for the mere hope you will remember some of this.

In the world of audio everyone Most people who have true knowledge are snobby assed prude who do not want to share there thoughts,
unless it's to bash your creation or personal experience or opinion.

Dont get me wrong to each there own!
But I personally have a heart and hate it when people sit in the glow of their computer screen thinking they are on a pedestal 90feet high and so lucky that they would every move there sausage fingers in succession to type words in our direction at the same time be too much of a snob to hit the "reply button" under one of our posts.

We are nothing in the world without knowledge and in this occupation/hobby, knowledge is more then gold, it's everything!
So I'm more then happy to share it with anyone who needs it.
So by all means guys enjoy and if you need help with something please feel free to ask!

 

Hey that's cool man, thanks!

 

Really cool guide, thanks a lot. This will come in handy!

 

Hey thanks alot man.... thats very useful, however i would be curious to see the other guide, particularly metal, as im doing a mix for a metal band at the moment and i'm finding it very hard to make the guitars sound good.
Thanks

 

Some more tips to get a good guitar sound in the order they pop to my mind:
-rather quad-track your guitars and use less distortion.
-use even less distortion
-Use different amps, pickups and guitars when quad-tracking
-Play variations of the riff when quad-tracking (e.g. play your line/riff up/down one octave)
-If you have a nice room use an additional condenser mic approx. 60cm to 1m in the room
-Change the angle of the mic on the cabinet. Experiment with distance. The closer you are to the speaker the more small changes in position will affect tone.
-Consider the space surrounding the mic and the sound source. Put your speakers up before micing them up to reduce reflections from the floor.
-Check phase if you use multiple mics on one source. (for the two mic case: Turn up your amp until you hear it humming. Flip phase on one mic. Listen to the signal through headphones. Move one mic around until hear less and less of the hum. At the point the hum is nearly gone you have found good position to minimize phase issues. Flip the phase back to normal before tracking.)
-get some multitracks from your favorite bands and listen to the sound. you will find the guitar sound bright, harsh and less "meaty" as you expected. as jpgrim said you have to "glue" guitar and bass to make for a good sound.
-use little reverb on your guitar amp (pleaaaaaaase). You will almost always have a better reverb in your DAW. There is little chance to "unreverb" something with little effort. So if your reverbs sucks it potentially will sucks for eternity.
-if possible keep a DI recorded track of your guitar track for re-amping.
-In my opinion EQ is not the best "fix" if you don't "like" your recorded guitar sound. If you have the time you may rather change your amp settings, tuning(!), mic position, mic, room sound and change those. It will pay off in the long run. An exception is maybe lowpass or highpass filtering to get rid of unnecessary stuff or fitting the guitar in the mix.
-If you really need EQ rather pull freqs than boost them.
-Practice playing to click blablabla...
-Don't bitch to the audio engineering about those 5msec of latency you think "mess with your playing". 10msec of latency is 3m of air between your ear and the sound source. In other words practice to play tight if you aim for layering.

just my 2 cents,
opty

 

first i cant see the "graph" (the website is probably blocked where i live) so I may be missing something! ^^

but I assume you are talking about backing or rhythm guitars here right?
because if I deal with lead guitars I wouldnt consider cutting at 4khz+ a guideline...I might sometimes actually boost about 3 or more dB a bit above that frequency (like 6khz) depending on the mic used

I agree that having mutiple guitar tracks is necessary and if you can play tight it's always better to play the part again, instead of duplicating it,
as the minute differences in your playing will make your sound thicker

when EQing your tracks, depending on the mic you used, your EQing should be different and somewhat complementary, dont just copy and paste from one guitar
track to the other, listen to the tracks and do it for each of them

also as we're on guitars, to thicken your guitar tracks, you can use an (or 2) aux track(s) with a bit of reverb and/or delay

 

I think here is the best guide:

"Get some multitracks from your favorite bands and listen to the sound. you will find the guitar sound bright, harsh and less "meaty" as you expected."

I also found interesting to "watch the sound" in a spectrum analyzer. It helps to understand the individual instrument´s EQ and how they interact in the mix.

 

Any advice on recording acoustic?

 

acoustic guitars are kind of tricky IMO and many people wont have the same idea about how to record them...

I didn't record acoustic guitars often but i'm a guitar player

so I'd say that first you need to pay attention to the type of guitar it is and choose your mic accordingly (depending on what characteristics you want to stand out)

then the mic placement will depend on the type of playing/music (strings/picks/strumming)...and of course the room (empty is better as you'll benefit from its natural reverb)

the few times I recorded acoustics guitars, I used a 2 mic setup (panned full left and right I think) one on the neck to get all the fret sounds and one on the body of the guitar
I guess most people will agree that you have to set the mic on the neck at about the middle of the neck (in terms of distance from the headstock)
the one recording the body might be placed to various position/angles around the bridge...just try and see what works best for you (sometimes really weird mic placement might be the answer!)

as to the distance between the mics and the guitar, there again it depends on what you want to achieve....but if its not live, give it some room, I'd say about 20/30 cm is all right...too far away will only record the "room"
finally as always pay attention to phase problems that may occur when using more than one mic. (listen to it in mono to see if you do not have a big "hole" in the middle)
you can also use a bit of compression to smooth out the peaks...but very light (2 or 4:1, with a rather fast attack and average release)

also make sure your take is as close as possible to the final sound you want...so spend time placing the mic correctly, as always using EQs sparingly is the best policy.

hope someone with more experience will provide you with better info *yes*